Ionospheric signatures of the April 25, 2015 Nepal earthquake and the relative role of compression and advection for Doppler sounding of infrasound in the ionosphere

Abstract

Ionospheric signatures possibly induced by the Nepal earthquake are investigated far outside the epicentral region in Taiwan (~3700 km distance from the epicenter) and in the Czech Republic (~6300 km distance from the epicenter). It is shown that the ionospheric disturbances were caused by long period, ~20 s, infrasound waves that were excited locally by vertical component of the ground surface motion and propagated nearly vertically to the ionosphere. The infrasound waves are heavily damped at the heights of F layer at around 200 km, so their amplitude strongly depends on the altitude of observation. In addition, in the case of continuous Doppler sounding, the value of the Doppler shift depends not only on the advection (up and down motion) of the reflecting layer but also on the compression/rarefaction of the electron gas and hence on the electron density gradient. Consequently, under significant differences of reflection height of sounding radio waves and partly also under large differences in plasma density gradients, the observed ionospheric response at larger distances from the epicenter can be comparable with the ionospheric response observed at shorter distances, although the amplitudes of causative seismic motions differ by more than one order of magnitude.