The Case for an Intra-Pacific Real Time GNSS Warning Network

Most natural hazards are regional in nature and are not limited to national boundaries. This talk is an appeal for the development of an intra-Pacific real time GNSS network of ground stations for tsunami and earthquake warning. The Tohoku earthquake of March 11, 2011 and its resulting tsunami amply demonstrated the value of real time GNSS analysis and the need for these data to be distributed within a multinational framework. Several authors have demonstrated the ability of the Japanese GEONET to capture in great detail the motions of the Earth's crust during that earthquake. As for previous Indo-Pacific earthquakes, NASA scientists demonstrated through modeling and observation that these deformation measurements could be transformed into reliable estimations of tsunamogenic potential. The GEONET also captured for the first time in great detail the generation and propagation of the resulting tsunami by the detection of the acoustically coupled Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances. The visualizations are very dramatic though the data from the GEONET and their analysis became available only days after this disaster. The technology and algorithms exist to implement an intra-Pacific GNSS warning network. The utility of this network will extend well beyond their value to the mitigation of natural disasters.