Impact of Natural Extreme Events on Geophysical Fields in the Environment
The paper discusses the effects of strong natural events on the acoustic fields in the atmosphere, on the geomagnetic field, and on the electrical characteristics of the atmospheric surface layer—atmospheric current and electric field. The extreme events covered by the work are volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and impacts of cosmic bodies falling to the Earth. These natural phenomena are considered as local indicators of enhanced interactions between the geospheres in the lithosphere–atmosphere near-surface system with active involvement of the ionosphere. It is shown that in these cases, the induced effects in the geophysical fields are observed at quite a distance from an event source and have similar amplitudes, which may testify to a special role of the ionosphere in a rapid long-distance transfer of the disturbances. As the main excitation mechanism of the ionosphere, the effect of the acoustic-gravity waves generated by the strong natural events in their epicentral zone is considered. The objectives and tasks of the research aimed at establishing main regularities and interaction mechanisms between the geospheres in the environment are formulated.