Ice shelves regulate the stability of marine ice sheets. We track fractures on Pine Island Glacier , a quickly-accelerating glacier in West Antarctica that contributes more to sea level rise than any other glacier. Using an on-ice seismic network deployed from 2012 to 2014, we catalog icequakes that dominantly consist of flexural gravity waves. Icequakes occur near the rift tip and in two distinct areas of the shear margin, and TerraSAR-X imagery shows significant fracture in each source region. Rift-tip icequakes increase with ice speed, linking rift fracture to glaciological stresses and/or localized thinning. Using a simple flexural gravity wave model, we deconvolve wave propagation effects to estimate icequake source durations of 19.5 to 50.0 s, and transient loads of 3.8 to 14.0 kPa corresponding to 4.3 to 15.9 m of crevasse growth per icequake. These long source durations suggest that water flow may limit the rate of crevasse opening.

On January 15, 2022, Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano violently erupted, generating a tsunami that killed three people. Acoustic-gravity waves propagated by the eruption and tsunami caused global complex ionospheric disturbances. In this paper, we study the nature of these perturbations from Global Navigation Satellite System observables over the southwestern Pacific. After processing data from 818 ground stations, we detect supersonic acoustic waves, Lamb waves, and tsunamis, with filtered magnitudes between 1 and 7 Total Electron Content units. Phase arrivals appear superpositioned up to ~1000 km from HTHH and are distinct by ~2200 km. Within ~2200 km, signals have an initial low-frequency pulse that transitions to higher frequencies. We note the presence of a faster perturbation generated one hour post-eruption which crosses the tsunami disturbance ~3000 km from HTHH, potentially contributing to premature land arrivals. Lastly, the arrival of tsunami-generated disturbances coincides with deep-ocean observations.

On October 2020, a Mw 7.6 earthquake struck to the south of the Shumagin Islands in Alaska, nearly 3 months after the Mw 7.8 Simeonof megathrust event. The initial models of the earthquake indicated a largely strike-slip rupture; however, the observed tsunami was much larger and widespread than expected for the focal mechanism. We investigate what sea surface deformation is necessary to recreate the tsunami waveforms using water-level inversion techniques. We find that the sea surface deformation does not resemble that expected from a purely strike-slip earthquake. We then carry out slip inversions with water level and static GNSS data as input. We explore the likelihood of megathrust co-seismic slip aiding tsunamigenesis. We propose that, concurrently with strike-slip faulting, it is likely that a considerable slip occurred on the megathrust westward and updip from the previous July 2020 event. We also propose that a smaller submarine landslide is likely to have occurred in an area prone to them. The Sand Point earthquake potentially released ~2 meters of accumulated slip in the western Shumagin Gap, but likely did not slip updip of ~15 km depth.

Large earthquakes are difficult to model in real-time with traditional inertial seismic measurements. Several algorithms that leverage high-rate RT-GNSS positions have been proposed and it has been shown that they can supplement the earthquake monitoring effort. However, analyses of the long-term noise behavior of high-rate RT-GNSS positions, which are important to understand how the data can be used operationally by monitoring agencies, have been limited to just a few sites and to short time spans. Here we show results from an analysis of the noise characteristics of one year of positions at 213 RT-GNSS sites spanning a large geographic region from Southern California to Alaska. We characterize the behavior of noise and propose several references noise models which can be used as baselines to compare against as technological improvements allow for higher precision solutions. We also show how to use the reference noise models to generate realistic synthetic noise that can be used in simulations of HR-GNSS waveforms. We discuss spatiotemporal variations in the noise and their potential sources and significance. We also detail how noise analysis can be used in a dynamic quality control to determine which sites should or should not contribute positions to an earthquake modeling algorithm at a particular moment in time. We posit that while there remain important improvements yet to be made, such as reducing the number of outliers in the time series, the present quality of real-time HR-GNSS waveforms is more than sufficient for monitoring large earthquakes.

We report on a feasibility study for an offshore instrument network in the Cascadia subduction zone to improve earthquake and tsunami early warning. The global DART buoy network provides effective warning for far-field tsunamis but near-field tsunami warning is challenging because the lead time is short and near-source observations are rarely available to directly measure the sea surface disturbance and evolution. Near-field tsunami warnings presently rely on rapid point source seismic inversions that do not estimate tsunami wave height. Efforts are underway to incorporate GNSS data into rapid source inversions that would support an initial near-field tsunami prediction. Offshore observations would contribute further to near-field tsunami warnings by providing: first, direct observations of seafloor and sea surface displacements during earthquake rupture and second, ongoing measurements for continued forecast refinement. Offshore instruments could also detect tsunamis triggered by submarine landslides and by so-called “tsunami” or “slow” or “silent” earthquakes that can generate unexpectedly large tsunamis but are characterized by shaking intensity so low as to be undetected or ignored. Pressure observations in the source zone will be challenging to interpret because they are dominated by seafloor accelerations and hydroacoustic waves rather than changes in hydrostatic pressure. In an effective system, pressure observations may need to be complemented by other observations such as inertial measurements of seafloor displacement, GNSS buoys and high-frequency coastal radar. It may also be important to place pressure sensors just seaward of the source zone to measure the developing tsunami in a region with an undisturbed seafloor. We will discuss alternative design options for an offshore instrument network in Cascadia, the research and development that must to be completed to determine the best approach, and the role of offshore observations in a holistic plan for tsunami mitigation.