EPP

Branching structure (BS) is a very important phenomenon in the evolution of equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs), the mechanism of which is widely studied from observation and from simulation. However, occurrence characteristics of branching structure of equatorial plasma bubbles (BSEPBs) have not been well addressed. In this work, we used seven-years (2012−2018) of observations from two all-sky imagers to study occurrence of BSEPBs in detail. These data reveal a high incidence of BS in EPB cases; in particular, most EPBs occurring on days with geomagnetic disturbances exhibited BS. Periods when all EPBs exhibited BS increased significantly in the 2014 solar maximum. Occurrence times of BSEPBs varied with local time; most of the BSEPBs began to appear between 21:00 and 22:00 LT. During the solar maximum, some BSEPBs were observed after midnight. The data also reveal that BSEPBs are characterized primarily by two branches or three branches. Multi-branching appeared only in the solar maximum. EPB events with different coexisting branching structures increased from 2012 to 2014 and decreased from 2014 to 2018. These results strongly suggest that BSEPB occurrence is related to solar activity and geomagnetic activity, and thus provide a new perspective for future studies of EPBs as well as enriching our understanding of ionospheric irregularity.

Observational evidence is insufficient to understand how equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) form over low latitudes. The mechanism of plasma-density enhancement (formation of “plasma blobs”) at low latitudes is in dispute. In this paper, we use data from multiple ground-based instruments (one all-sky airglow imager, five digisondes, and one Fabry–Perot interferometer) to investigate the evolution of an EPB event that occurred at low latitudes over China on the night of 06 December 2015 (06-Dec-2015). We provide observational evidence that an enhanced equatorward wind most likely induced by a substorm could have initiated the Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) that destabilized several EPB depletions in an upwelling region of a large-scale wave-like structure (LSWS) in the bottomside ionosphere. Those EPB depletions were forced to surge poleward, from nearly 10° to 19° magnetic latitude, two hours before midnight. Smaller-scale bifurcations evolved rapidly from tips of airglow depletions by a secondary E × B instability when the aforementioned substorm-induced southwestward wind blew through. During the growth phase of the EPB depletions, a westward polarization electric field inside the LSWS is likely to have compressed plasma downward, inducing the two airglow-type blobs observed in the bottomside ionosphere, by a mechanism of LSWS-blob connection that we propose. We also provide observational evidence of brightness airglow depletions. We find that an enhanced poleward wind associated with a passing-by brightness wave (BW) is likely to have transported plasma to fill the airglow depletions, which finally evolved into brightness airglow structures. This study investigates the physical processes accompanied by the EPB event and those two-airglow blobs observed at low-latitudes over China.

The global atmospheric static stability (N²) in the middle atmosphere and its relation to gravity waves (GWs) were investigated by using the temperature profiles measured by the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument from 2002 to 2018. At low latitudes, a layer with enhanced N² occurs at an altitude of ~20 km and exhibits annual oscillations caused by tropopause inversion layers. Above an altitude of ~70 km, enhanced N² exhibits semiannual oscillations at low latitudes caused by the mesosphere inversion layers and annual oscillations at high latitudes resulting from the downward shift of the summer mesopause. The correlation coefficients between N² and GW amplitudes can be larger than 0.8 at latitudes poleward of ~40°N/S. This observation provides factual evidence that a large N² supports large-amplitude GWs and indicates that N² plays a dominant role in maintaining GWs at least at high latitudes of the middle atmosphere. This evidence also partially explains the previous results regarding the phase changes of annual oscillations of GWs at high latitudes.