An Mw 9.3 earthquake originated in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra at 00:58:53 Universal Time (UT) on 26 December 2004. Two giant ionospheric disturbances at 01:19 and 04:10 UT are observed by a network of digital Doppler sounders in Taiwan. The first disturbance excited mainly by Rayleigh waves, which consists of a packet of short‐period Doppler shift variations, results in vertical ionospheric fluctuations with a maximum velocity of about 70 m/s and displacement of about 200 m. The second disturbance, in a W‐shaped pulse propagating at a horizontal speed of 360 ± 70 m/s, is attributable to coupling of the atmospheric gravity waves (AGW) excited by broad crustal uplift together with the following big tsunami waves around the earthquake source zone. The accompanying ionosonde data suggest that the AGW in the atmosphere may have caused the ionosphere to move up and down by about 40 km.

In this paper, concurrent/colocated measurements of seismometers, infrasonic systems, magnetometers, HF‐CW (high frequency‐continuous wave) Doppler sounding systems, and GPS receivers are employed to detect disturbances triggered by seismic waves of the 11 March 2011 M9.0 Tohoku earthquake. No time delay between colocated infrasonic (i.e., super long acoustic) waves and seismic waves indicates that the triggered acoustic and/or gravity waves in the atmosphere (or seismo‐traveling atmospheric disturbances, STADs) near the Earth's surface can be immediately activated by vertical ground motions. The circle method is used to find the origin and compute the observed horizontal traveling speed of the triggered infrasonic waves. The speed of about 3.3 km/s computed from the arrival time versus the epicentral distance suggests that the infrasonic waves (i.e., STADs) are mainly induced by the Rayleigh waves. The agreements in the travel time at various heights between the observation and theoretical calculation suggest that the STADs triggered by the vertical motion of ground surface caused by the Tohoku earthquake traveled vertically from the ground to the ionosphere with speed of the sound in the atmosphere over Taiwan.

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In summer 1995, in collaboration with the deep multi-channel seismic profiling project around the island of Taiwan, an onshore-offshore wide angle deep seismic profiling experiment was conducted in Taiwan. The re sults are expected to provide the first complete seismic images of the deep crustal structure for a better understanding of the Taiwan orogeny and subduction-collision system. The experiment consists of three profiles, one along each of the central and southern cross-island highways and another on the south-link highway of the island. For the first two lines, 35 three component portable seismographs were deployed along each of the 116 and 135 km-long profiles onshore, with airgun shots being fired at distances

On 21 September 1999 (Taiwan local time), a major earthquake measuring M7.3 occurred near the town of Chi-Chi in central Taiwan. After the Chi-Chi earthquake, geomagnetic data recorded by a network of 8 stations equipped with continuous recording systems was analyzed. The results revealed that the total geomagnetic intensity of the Liyutan station, about 8 kilometers from the northern end of the Chelungpu fault (considered to be related to the earthquake), fluctuated significantly for more than a month prior to the earthquake. The fluctuation features continued and then stopped after the Chia-Yi earthquake (M6.2) occurred near the southern end of the Chelungpu fault on 22 October 1999. The variation of intensity reached 200 nTs. Geomagnetic fluctuations were also found at the Tsengwen station, located about 42 kilometers from the southern end of the Chelungpu fault and 30 kilometers from the Chia-Yi earthquake. These geomagnetic disruptions with highly anomalous amplitudes associated with the Chi-Chi and Chia-Yi earthquakes appear to have been the result of the accumulation and release of crustal stress that led to the subsequently severe surface rupture at the time of the earthquakes.