The 2021 volcanic eruption in La Palma Island and its impact on ionospheric scintillation as measured from GNSS reference stations, GNSS-R, and GNSS-RO

Ionospheric disturbances induced by seismic activity have been studied in the last years by many authors, showing an impact both before and after the occurrence of earthquakes. In this study, the ionospheric scintillation produced by the 2021 La Palma volcano eruption is analyzed. The "Cumbre Vieja" volcano was active from September 19th to December 13th, 2021, and many magnitude 3–4 earthquakes were recorded, with some of them reaching magnitude 5. In this study the three methods: GNSS reference monitoring, GNSS Reflectometry (GNSS-R) from NASA CYGNSS, and GNSS Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) from COSMIC and Spire constellations, are used, allowing us to compare and evaluate their performance in the same conditions. To compare the seismic activity with ionospheric scintillation, earthquakes’ generated energy, and percentile 95 % of the intensity scintillation parameter (S4), measurements have been computed every 6 h intervals for the whole duration of the volcanic eruption. GNSS-RO has shown the best correlation between earthquakes’ energy and S4, with values up to 0.09 when the perturbations occur around 18 h after the seismic activity. GNSS reference monitoring stations data also shows some correlation 18 h after and 7–8 days after. As expected, GNSS-R is the one that shows the smallest correlation, as the ionospheric signatures get masked by the signature of the surface where the reflection is taking place. Additionally, as expected as well, the three methods show a smaller correlation during the week before earthquakes.
This work was supported in part by the grant PID2021-126436OB-C21 from the Programa Estatal para Impulsar la Investigación Científico-Técnica y su Transferencia, del Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica, Técnica y de Innovación 2021-2023 (Spain) and in part by the European Social Fund (ESF). GNSS-RO Spire data has been provided by the European Space Agency through the ESA TPM SPIRE project id 67176.
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