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Ionospheric scintillation and fading events over low‐latitude regions are often caused by severely depleted geomagnetic field‐aligned structures known as Equatorial Plasma Bubbles. These events are subject of interest to scientific investigations and concern to technological applications. Over the past several years, most of scintillation studies have focused on the dependence of these events on density gradients, location, local time, geomagnetic conditions, and so forth. This work presents a discussion about the role of the alignment between the signal propagation path and the depleted structures or, equivalently, the geomagnetic field lines, on the observed scintillation and deep fading characteristics. Data from three stations (dip latitudes: 16.13°S, 19.87°S, and 22.05°S) located around the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) region were used to assess the amplitude scintillation severity and the deep fading events features under aligned and nonaligned conditions. The results show that the alignment condition plays a crucial role in the occurrence of strong scintillation. The study also revealed that, as stations far from the crests of the EIA are considered, the alignment influence seems to increase, and that a combination of strong plasma density fluctuation and increased aligned path is, presumably, the configuration under which the most severe scintillation and drastic deep fading events are observed. The results indicate that this conjunction is typically met in regions somewhat distinct from that with largest plasma density background over the Brazilian region, therefore, strongest scintillation and largest deep fading rates were observed by a station slightly off‐the EIA peak.

 

Abstract The occurrence of plasma irregularities and ionospheric scintillation over the Caribbean region have been reported in previous studies, but a better understanding of the source and conditions leading to these events is still needed. In December 2021, three ground-based ionospheric scintillation and Total Electron Content monitors were installed at different locations over Puerto Rico to better understand the occurrence of ionospheric irregularities in the region and to quantify their impact on transionospheric signals. Here, the findings for an event that occurred on March 13–14, 2022 are reported. The measurements made by the ground-based instrumentation indicated that ionospheric irregularities and scintillation originated at low latitudes and propagated, subsequently, to mid-latitudes. Imaging of the ionospheric F-region over a wide range of latitudes provided by the GOLD mission confirmed, unequivocally, that the observed irregularities and the scintillation were indeed caused by extreme equatorial plasma bubbles, that is, bubbles that reach abnormally high apex heights. The joint ground- and space-based observations show that plasma bubbles reached apex heights exceeding 2600 km and magnetic dip latitudes beyond 28 ° . In addition to the identification of extreme plasma bubbles as the source of the ionospheric perturbations over low-to-mid latitudes, GOLD observations also provided experimental evidence of the background ionospheric conditions leading to the abnormally high rise of the plasma bubbles and to severe L-band scintillation. These conditions are in good agreement with the theoretical hypothesis previously proposed. Graphical Abstract 

We introduce the implementation of a global climatological model of the equatorial ionospheric F-region zonal drifts (EZDrifts) that is made available to the public. The model uses the analytic description of the zonal plasma drifts presented by Haerendel et al. (1992) [ J Geophys Res 97(A2) : 1209–1223] and is driven by climatological models of the ionosphere and thermosphere under a realistic geomagnetic field configuration. EZDrifts is an expansion of the model of the zonal drifts first presented by Shidler & Rodrigues (2021) [ Prog Earth Planet Sci 8 : 26] which was only valid for the Jicamarca longitude sector and two specific solar flux conditions. EZDrifts now uses vertical equatorial plasma drifts from Scherliess & Fejer (1999) [ J Geophys Res 104(A4) : 6829–6842] model which allows it to provide zonal drifts for any day of the year, longitude, and solar flux condition. We show that the model can reproduce the main results of the Shidler & Rodrigues (2021) [ Prog Earth Planet Sci 8 : 26] model for the Peruvian sector. We also illustrate an application of EZDrifts by presenting and discussing longitudinal variabilities produced by the model. We show that the model predicts longitudinal variations in the reversal times of the drifts that are in good agreement with observations made by C/NOFS. EZDrifts also predicts longitudinal variations in the magnitude of the drifts that can be identified in the June solstice observations made by C/NOFS. We also point out data-model differences observed during Equinox and December solstice. Finally, we explain that the longitudinal variations in the zonal plasma drifts are caused by longitudinal variations in the latitude of the magnetic equator and, consequently, in the wind dynamo contributing to the resulting drifts. EZDrifts is distributed to the community through a public repository and can be used in applications requiring an estimate of the overall behavior of the equatorial zonal drifts. 

The low-latitude ionosphere has an active behavior causing the total electron content (TEC) to vary spatially and temporally very dynamically. The solar activity and the geomagnetic field have a strong influence over the spatiotemporal distribution of TEC. These facts make it a challenge to attempt modeling the ionization response. Single frequency GNSS users are particularly vulnerable due to these ionospheric variations that cause degradation of positioning performance. Motivated by recent applications of machine learning, temporal series of TEC available in map formats were employed to build an independent TEC estimator model for low-latitude environments. A TEC dataset was applied along with geophysical indices of solar flux and magnetic activity to train a feedforward artificial neural network based on a multilayer perceptron (MLP) approach. The forecast for the next 24 h was made relying on TEC maps over the Brazilian region using data collected on the previous 5 days. The performance of this approach was evaluated and compared with real data. The accuracy of the model was evaluated taking into account seasonality, spatial coverage and dependence on solar flux and geomagnetic activity indices. The results of the analysis show that the developed model has a superior capacity describing the TEC behavior across Brazil, when compared to global ionosphere maps and the NeQuick G model. TEC predictions were applied in single point positioning. The achieved errors were 27% and 33% lower when compared to the results obtained using the NeQuick G and global ionosphere maps, respectively, showing success in estimating TEC with small recent datasets using MLP. 

Abstract We introduce a new numerical model developed to assist with Data Interpretation and Numerical Analysis of ionospheric Missions and Observations (DINAMO). DINAMO derives the ionospheric electrostatic potential at low- and mid-latitudes from a two-dimensional dynamo equation and user-specified inputs for the state of the ionosphere and thermosphere (I–T) system. The potential is used to specify the electric fields and associated F -region E × B plasma drifts. Most of the model was written in Python to facilitate the setup of numerical experiments and to engage students in numerical modeling applied to space sciences. Here, we illustrate applications and results of DINAMO in two different analyses. First, DINAMO is used to assess the ability of widely used I–T climatological models (IRI-2016, NRLMSISE-00, and HWM14), when used as drivers, to produce a realistic representation of the low-latitude electrodynamics. In order to evaluate the results, model E × B drifts are compared with observed climatology of the drifts derived from long-term observations made by the Jicamarca incoherent scatter radar. We found that the climatological I–T models are able to drive many of the features of the plasma drifts including the diurnal, seasonal, altitudinal and solar cycle variability. We also identified discrepancies between modeled and observed drifts under certain conditions. This is, in particular, the case of vertical equatorial plasma drifts during low solar flux conditions, which were attributed to a poor specification of the E -region neutral wind dynamo. DINAMO is then used to quantify the impact of meridional currents on the morphology of F -region zonal plasma drifts. Analytic representations of the equatorial drifts are commonly used to interpret observations. These representations, however, commonly ignore contributions from meridional currents. Using DINAMO we show that that these currents can modify zonal plasma drifts by up to ~ 16 m/s in the bottom-side post-sunset F -region, and up to ~ 10 m/s between 0700 and 1000 LT for altitudes above 500 km. Finally, DINAMO results show the relationship between the pre-reversal enhancement (PRE) of the vertical drifts and the vertical shear in the zonal plasma drifts with implications for equatorial spread F.