As tsunamis propagate across open oceans, they remain largely unseen due to the lack of adequate sensors, hence limiting the scope of existing tsunami warnings. A potential alternative method relies on the Global Navigation Satellites Systems to monitor the ionosphere for Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances created by tsunami-induced internal gravity waves (IGWs). The approach has been applied to tsunamis generated by earthquakes but rarely by undersea volcanic eruptions injecting energy into both the ocean and the atmosphere. The large 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption tsunami is thus a challenge for tsunami ionospheric imprint detection. Here, we show that in near-field regions (<1500km), despite the complex wavefield, we can isolate the tsunami imprint. We also highlight that the eruption-generated Lamb wave’s ionospheric imprints show an arrival time and an amplitude spatial pattern consistent with internal gravity wave origin.

As tsunamis propagate across open oceans, they remain largely unseen due to the lack of adequate sensors, hence limiting the scope of existing tsunami warnings. A potential alternative method relies on the Global Navigation Satellites Systems to monitor the ionosphere for Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances created by tsunami-induced internal gravity waves (IGWs). The approach has been applied to tsunamis generated by earthquakes but rarely by undersea volcanic eruptions injecting energy into both the ocean and the atmosphere. The large 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption tsunami is thus a challenge for tsunami ionospheric imprint detection. Here, we show that in near-field regions (<1500km), despite the complex wavefield, we can isolate the tsunami imprint. We also highlight that the eruption-generated Lamb wave’s ionospheric imprints show an arrival time and an amplitude spatial pattern consistent with internal gravity wave origin.

On 15 January 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano erupted violently and triggered a giant atmospheric shock wave and tsunami. The exact mechanism of this extraordinary eruptive event, its size and magnitude are not well understood yet. In this work, we analyze data from the nearest ground-based receivers of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to explore the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) response to this event. We show that the ionospheric response consists of a giant TEC increase followed by a strong long-lasting depletion. We observe that the explosive event of 15 January 2022 began at 04:05:54UT and consisted of at least 5 explosions. Based on the ionospheric TEC data, we estimate the energy released during the main major explosion to be between 9 and 37 Megatons in TNT equivalent. This is the first detailed analysis of the eruption sequence scenario and the timeline from ionospheric TEC observations.