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Longitudinal and seasonal dependence of nighttime equatorial plasma density irregularities during solar minimum detected on the C/NOFS satellite
Author(s) -
Dao E.,
Kelley M. C.,
Roddy P.,
Retterer J.,
Ballenthin J. O.,
de La Beaujardiere O.,
Su Y.J.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2011gl047046
Subject(s) - equator , scintillation , ionosphere , longitude , satellite , dynamo , atmospheric sciences , thermosphere , daytime , langmuir probe , latitude , amplitude , environmental science , f region , physics , magnetic dip , solar maximum , plasma , geology , geodesy , geophysics , solar wind , solar cycle , astronomy , magnetic field , plasma diagnostics , optics , quantum mechanics , detector
During the night in the F region about the equator, plasma density depletions form, causing scintillation. In April 2008, the Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory was launched to predict ionospheric scintillation. Using its Planar Langmuir Probe (PLP), C/NOFS is capable of measuring in situ ion density within the F region over the equator. Plasma irregularities are found regularly during the night. We examine how these irregularities depend on longitude, latitude, and season. The most significant observations from this study are longitudinal structures in which these irregularities most frequently occur. Since similar structure has been found in diurnal tides, we conclude that lower atmospheric tides may play a strong role in determining the amplitude of equatorial irregularities, at least during low solar minimum conditions when the presented observations were made. We propose that this link is likely related to the generation of zonal electric fields by the E‐region dynamo.