Ionospheric Gravity Waves Driven by Oceanic Gravity Waves in Resonance: A Modeling Study in Search of Their Spectra

Ionospheric observations associated with the 2011 Tohoku tsunami have revealed gravity waves having spectral characteristics that depend on their proximity to the epicenter. There is a preponderance of medium-scale waves in the vicinity of the epicenter, a significant bifurcation into short- and long-period waves over the Hawaiian archipelago, and a narrow and rich spectrum of waves over the West Coast and inland of the United States (U.S.). Guided by these previous observations, we consider wave sources as triads of nonlinearly interacting oceanic gravity waves, whose wave parameters satisfy resonant conditions. These waves are simulated using a 2-D nonlinear model describing gravity wave propagation in order to explain the observations of tsunamigenic traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) associated with the Tohoku event.