Earthquake related Ionospheric signatures over Cyprus

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate co-seismic earthquake ionospheric signatures as detected by remote sensing instrumentation situated in Cyprus by exploiting Total Electron Content measurements from calibrated 1 sec RINEX files from the Cyprus Positioning System (CYPOS) GNSS stations and ionograms from the Cyprus Digisonde that is monitoring the electron density profile over Cyprus at 5 min resolution. Through these observations, we established atmospheric wave activity emanating from the earthquake epicenter that took place in Turkey on the 6 February 2023. The major earthquake shock of 7.8 (Mw) struck southern and central Turkey, as well as northern and western Syria km west-northwest of Gaziantep at 01:17 UTC. Subsequently a second 7.6 (Mw) earthquake occurred at 10:24 UTC to the north-northeast in Kahramanmaraş Province. Following the first earthquake no ionospheric signatures were detected but the second earthquake around local noon caused notable acoustic wave activity on the ionosphere.