  The Hunga-Tonga volcano eruption at 04:14:45 UT on 15 January 2022 produced
various waves propagating globally, disturbing the background atmosphere and
ionosphere. Coinciding with the arrival of perturbation waves, several
equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) were consecutively generated at post-sunset
hours over the East/Southeast Asian region, with the largest extension to
middle latitudes. These EPBs caused intense L-band amplitude scintillations at
middle-to-low latitudes, with signal fading depths up to ~16 dB. Considering
the very rare occurrence of EPBs during this season in East/Southeast Asian
sector and the significantly modulated background ionosphere, we believe that
the perturbation waves launched by the volcano eruption triggered the
generation of unseasonal super EPBs. The ionospheric perturbations linked with
the 2022 Tonga volcano eruption propagated coincidently through the
East/Southeast Asia longitude sector near sunset, modulated the equatorial F
region bottomside plasma density and acted as the seeding source for the
generation of unseasonal super bubbles. Our results implicate that volcano
eruption could indirectly affect the satellite communication links in the
region more than ten thousand kilometers away.
