Ground-based GPS imaging of ionospheric post-seismic signal

During the Demeter mission, a continuous global positioning system (GPS) ionospheric tomography above Europe, Japan and California will be performed with the Service and Products of ionosphere Electronic Content and Tropospheric Refractive index over Europe (SPECTRE) experiment. The main goal of the conducted observations is to detect and characterize post-seimic ionospheric perturbations associated to seismic generated waves, more precisely near field seismic waves, far field Rayleigh waves and tsunamis. We first review the theory describing post-seismic ionospheric signals as well as the most recent observations of these signals. We then present the description of the tomographic procedure used for the SPECTRE experiment, as well as the obtained tomographic models. We finally draw the perspective of such observations. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.