GPS Discrimination of Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances from Underground Nuclear Explosions and Earthquakes

Various geophysical activities generate characteristic traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs), which are detectible using the GPS data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). In this paper, numerical third-order slant total electron content (STEC) derivatives of the TIDs from the 2006 and 2009 North Korean underground nuclear explosions (UNEs) are compared to the STEC derivatives of the TIDs from the 2011 Japanese Tohoku earthquake. The amplitude spectra of the STEC derivative waveforms from the earthquake have significantly lower frequency components than those from the UNEs. In addition, a correlation analysis found that the phase differences between the earthquake and UNE waveforms were much greater than those between the waveforms of the UNEs. Thus, the TIDs induced by the two different events may be readily discriminated on the basis of their distinctive spectral properties. Copyright (C) 2014 Institute of Navigation.