run up of internal waves on a gentle slope in a two layered system this paper describes the dissipative phase of internal wave run up on uniform slopes of 0 030 and 0 054 rad as observed in a series of laboratory experiments the waves were generated continuously at the interface of two miscible layers of differing density as each wave in the perodic train propagated onto the slope it steepened and developed into a solitary like wave before finally overturning surrounding fluid was engulfed into the wave as it overturned and the resulting gravitational instability produced considerable turbulence and mixing the broken wave took the form of a discrete bolus of dense fluid which propagated for some distance up the slope bulk parameters which characterize the nature of the bolus were defined and the dependence of these on the incident wave parameters and their behaviour during the run up phase were examined

interferometer studies of equatorial f region irregularities and drifts a radar interferometer technique developed at jicamarca peru and first used to study electrojet irregularities has now been used successfully to study plasma turbulence in the equatorial f region our first results have shown that the most turbulent echoes appear to come from a region that extends for tens of kilometers in altitude but for only a kilometer or less in the east west direction this slab may very well be the wall of a depleted region a plasma bubble sometimes the irregularities can be tracked as they move eastward or westward velocity profiles for the evening period obtained in this way show a strong shear with westward velocities at the lowest altitudes observed and eastward velocities above a plausible explanation for this shear is that the westward drifts are driven by electric fields produced by westward e region winds and mapped up along magnetic field lines while at higher heights where the electron density is greater the drifts are controlled by the f region dynamo driven by eastward winds

climate science timing is everything during deglaciations links between various climate records for the north atlantic ocean and the mediterranean sea have helped to identify a potential mechanism that enhanced sea level rise during the last interglacial time interval see letter p 197 a central goal of palaeoclimate research is that of deciphering the mechanisms responsible for major state shifts in the earth system such as between glacial and interglacial conditions this has proven difficult enough even for the last glacial termination t i much less termination ii t ii which ended glacial conditions about 130 000 years ago gianluca marino et al use new and existing data to demonstrate a link within uncertainties between heinrich stadial 11 hs11 a prominent northern hemisphere cold event and the timing of peak sea level rise during t ii a strong southern hemisphere warming also occurred during hs11 consistent with the idea of a bipolar seesaw that would probably have promoted antarctic ice sheet melting in contrast rapid sea level rise in t 1 clearly postdated heinrich stadial 1 possibly in response to differing co2 and insolation conditions during t i and t ii fundamentally different mechanisms seem to be at work in triggering glacial terminations

high resolution oi 630 nm image measurements of f region depletion drifts during the guara campaign a high performance all sky imaging system has provided data on the evolution and drift motions of f region depletions above the magnetic dip equator at alc ntara brazil 2 3 s 44 5 w monochromatic images of depletions in the oi 630 nm nightglow were recorded on eight nights during 1 16 october 1994 as part of the guara campaign the drift motions of the depletions were typically 80 100 m s eastward prior to local midnight and reduced to a minimum of 30 50 m s in the morning hours in accord with previous observations however on october 2 3 and 12 13 the depletions were observed to reverse direction for 60 90 min achieving westward speeds of 30 m s before the motion reverted to eastward around 0100 lt and accelerated to 35 45 m s near dawn magnetic activity and other evidence suggests that these reversals in the motion of the airglow depletions probably result from reversals in the f region dynamo rather than from shifts in the altitude of the shear in the nighttime f region plasma drift

ionospheric conditions affecting the evolution of equatorial plasma depletions model studies have been carried out to specify the ionospheric conditions and electrodynamical processes required to describe the geometry of westward tilting and bifurcating equatorial plasma depletions inferred from airglow imaging measurements taken on ascension island in early 1981 the results indicate that if the westward tilts are to be associated with eastward plasma drifts that decrease with altitude above the f peak this shear must be set up by a zonal wind pattern of decreasing speed at increasing distances from the equator below the peak calculations of flux tube integrated pedersen conductivity including both e and f region contributions are in agreement with the simulations of zalesak et al 1982 that show bifurcated depletions to be associated with a mild gradient in the bottomside conductivity profile

observations of internal wave reflection off sloping bottoms current and temperature spectra exhibit intensification and polarization near sloping bottoms over a band of frequencies centered at the local internal wave critical frequency examples are drawn from a variety of island seamount and continental slope observations waves propagating down from mid depth change energy density wave number and azimuth when they reflect off the bottom providing a natural perturbation to the deep ocean interior internal wave spectrum deviations from linear theory are interpreted as evidence for dissipation through subsequent shear instability and or nonlinear interaction topographic features appear likely to be energy sinks for internal wave energy

first detection of the supersonic upward plasma flow structures in the early morning sector we present the first observations of the supersonic updrafting plasma drifts in the predawn sector two dmsp satellites quasi simultaneously detected two fast speed events one of 385 km spatial extension and with the maximum upward velocity of 1683 m s appeared at 3 lt and the other of 1500 km large with maximum speed of 1770 m s occurred at 5 lt both supersonic structures were observed above the eastern pacific region separated by 35 of longitude in space and by 45 min in time the events occurred at the recovery phase of the geomagnetic storm of 19 february 2014 during rapid oscillations of the interplanetary magnetic field b z and the interplanetary electric field e y components which increased the eastward electric field in the equatorial nighttime ionosphere and triggered the generation of plasma irregularities the storm time penetration electric fields seem to be the principal driver of the observed supersonic events

observations of nonlinear internal waves on the outer new england continental shelf during the summer shelfbreak primer study observations are presented of nonlinear internal waves on the outer new england continental shelf during the summer shelfbreak primer study conducted between july 26 and august 5 1996 current and temperature measurements were made with an upward looking acoustic doppler current profiler adcp located on the 147 m isobath near the shelfbreak and three vertical thermistor moorings located upshelf data from the adcp and two nearby thermistor chains show energetic internal tides propagating at roughly 0 9 m s 21 to the north northwest nearly perpendicular to the local topography with 10 15 cm s 21 horizontal currents and 15 30 m vertical displacements these waves evolve rapidly within a 5 8 km range into an undular internal tidal bore cross isobath barotropic tidal currents responsible for generating the internal tides are in the 5 12 cm s 21 range the bore formation is highly variable there is evidence of a correlation between internal tide steepening and a shelfbreak front jet orientation that is oppositely directed to the internal tide propagation there is no correlation between steepening and the jet s vertical shear statistics of the undular bores show rms travel time fluctuations from 0 8 to 1 7 hours and average tidal bore durations from 12 to 9 hours the average undular bore speed is 0 9 m s 21 with an rms fluctuation of 0 4 m s 21 the number of high frequency waves in the bore varies from 0 to 8 near the shelfbreak and increases to 30 waves 26 7 km upshelf the observed distribution function of temporal spacing between high frequency internal waves is spread between 4 and 20 min

the shaping of continental slopes by internal tides the angles of energy propagation of semidiurnal internal tides may determine the average gradient of continental slopes in ocean basins 2 to 4 degrees intensification of near bottom water velocities and bottom shear stresses caused by reflection of semi diurnal internal tides affects sedimentation patterns and bottom gradients as indicated by recent studies of continental slopes off northern california and new jersey estimates of bottom shear velocities caused by semi diurnal internal tides are high enough to inhibit deposition of fine grained sediment onto the slopes

equatorial ionospheric plasma bubble irregularity occurrence and zonal velocities under quiet and disturbed conditions from polarimeter observations amplitude scintillation and faraday rotation angle fluctuations of satellite vhf beacons registered by electronic polarimeters operated at two stations spaced 110 km apart in the magnetic east west direction namely cachoeira paulista 22 41 s 45 w dip angle of 26 and sao jose dos campos 23 12 s 45 51 w dip angle of 26 in brazil are analyzed for equinoctial and summer months of 1982 1983 to determine the irregularity patch occurrence characteristics and their zonal velocities under varying levels of magnetic disturbances the scintillation patch occurrences and total electron content fluctuations representing plasma depletion structures decrease during premidnight hours and are enhanced in the postmidnight period the occurrences often extend to morning hours with increasing magnetic activity index while the night events are associated with eastward irregularity patch motion the morning events have westward velocities the reversal occurring around 0400 lt reflecting the morning velocity reversal in the f region bulk plasma motion reported earlier from jicamarca radar measurements the westward plasma bubble motions reported here represent the first observation of this kind another important finding from the present investigation is a clear tendency for the zonal plasma motion namely the equatorial meridional electric field to become enhanced mainly in the premidnight hours immediately following strong magnetic activity

hydraulic jump and undular bore formation on a shelf break abstract the evolution of the semidiurnal internal tide as it propagates across the australian north west shelf is discussed analytically as the tide is of long wavelength and small amplitude this evolution is described by a perturbed extended korteweg de vries equation it is found that the flow is dominated by nonlinearity and hence is hydraulic except in the neighborhood of any shocks predicted by hydraulic theory hydraulic theory predicts the formation of two shocks in each period of the tide the inclusion of dispersion in boundary layers around the shocks results in one of these shocks breaking up into an undular bore good agreement is found with observations by holloway of the semidiurnal internal tide on the australian north west shelf

high frequency internal waves in lake geneva trains of high frequency internal waves have been observed in the thermocline of lake geneva within a few hours after the passing of disturbances which cause a rapid increase or jump in the depth of the thermocline three possible mechanisms for the source of the internal waves are proposed and compared with available data i that the waves are a soliton packet following the jump ii that the waves are generated as the jump passes over or around a local region of rough topography and iii that the jump produces a moving disturbance near the shoreline with internal waves forming a wake behind it the investigation of the last possibility involves the solution of the problem of the form of an internal wave wake in the presence of mean currents which vary in depth both in their strength and direction the wave pattern of the wake in the observed current distribution and stratification of the lake is described and compared with that in the absence of shear an expression for the energy of internal waves propagating in a shear flow is also derived and it is found that the rate of energy loss from the jump to the waves is small the minimum richardson number resulting from the co existence of the mean shear and the internal waves is marginally greater than 1 4 suggesting that the waves may be limited by shear flow instability however none of the mechanisms for their generation and propagation is fully compatible with the available data

internal wave breaking at concave and convex continental slopes abstract internal wave reflection from a sloping topographic boundary may lead to enhanced shear if the topographic angle to the horizontal is close to that of the internal wave group velocity vector previous analytic studies have suggested that shear enhancement is reduced at concave slopes as compared with convex and planar slopes near the critical angle here the internal wave reflection from concave and convex slopes that pass through the critical angle is investigated numerically using the nonhydrostatic massachusetts institute of technology general circulation model mitgcm overturning shear instability and resultant mixing are examined results are compared with simulations of wave reflection from planar slopes with angles greater than less than and equal to the critical angle in contrast to the analytic predictions no reduction in mixing is found for the concave slope as compared with the other slopes in all cases stratification is eroded in a band above the slope bounded at its outer

exchange through the strait of gibraltar to measure the exchange between the atlantic and mediterranean through the strait of gibraltar an array of current meter moorings was deployed for a year in the strait during 1985 1986 a novel aspect of these measurements is the inclusion of conductivity as well as temperature and pressure sensors on each current meter so that the salinity of the flows could be monitored continuously these salinity measurements determine the water mass characteristics of the flows crossing the sill they allow definition of the 37 psu isohaline as the interface between inflowing fresher atlantic water and outflowing saltier mediterranean water and they enable time series to be developed for the depth of this interface for the upper layer inflow and for the lower layer outflow from these measurements the time averaged outflow of mediterranean water is estimated to be 0 68sv 1sv 1 106m3s 1 and the outflow salinity transport defined to be the outflow times the salinity excess above a basic atlantic water salinity of 36 1 psu is estimated to be 1 50 103m3s 1 1sv 1psu 1 103m3s 1 equivalent to a net evaporation over the mediterranean basin of 52cm y 1 extrapolated measurements of the inflow from current meters generally deployed below 100m depth yield an estimate for the time averaged inflow of 0 93sv which is believed to be unrealistically high in view of the better measured outflow and net evaporation thus a more realistic estimate of the inflow is 0 72sv equal to the sum of the outflow and net evaporation as required by the mass budget for the mediterranean sea such estimates of the exchange are smaller by almost a factor of 2 than previous values for the exchange by lacombe and richez 1982 the exchange across the gibraltar sill is found to be due in nearly equal parts to the mean currents and to the tidal fluctuations the mean currents are smaller than had been expected reaching a peak value of only about 60 cm s 1 in the deep outflow over the sill the tidal exchange is due to a strong correlation over the tidal period between the depth of the interface and the strength of the inflowing currents for the m2 tide at the sill the amplitude of the interface depth is 51 m and the amplitude of the tidal currents is 1 2m s 1 furthermore the inflow and interface depth have similar phases as a consequence the upper layer is deep on the inflowing tide so that a large slug of atlantic water crosses the sill into the mediterranean on the outflowing tide the interface is shallow so that a large slug of mediterranean water crosses the sill into the atlantic similar processes occur for the s2 o1 and k1 tides though the amplitude are smaller in this manner tidal oscillations lead to a time averaged exchange of water masses across the gibraltar sill the inflow and outflow defined to be the instantaneous transports above and below the 37psu isohaline interface exhibit m2 tidal amplitudes of 2 3 sv and 1 3sv respectively thus the tides are large enough to reverse the mean upper layer inflow and lower layer outflow daily averaged inflow and outflow transports exhibit low frequency fluctuations with standard deviations of 0 37sv and 0 22sv respectively such low frequency fluctuations have been shown previously to be associated with barotropic flows through the strait of gibraltar compensating for sea level variations over the mediterranean due to atmospheric pressure fluctuations candela winant and bryden 1989 finally from these measurements there appear to be little fortnightly or annual period fluctuations in the exchange through the strait of gibraltar

the degeneration of large scale interfacial gravity waves in lakes mechanisms for the degeneration of large scale interfacial gravity waves are identified for lakes in which the effects of the earth s rotation can be neglected by assuming a simple two layer model and comparing the timescales over which each of these degeneration mechanisms act regimes are defined in which particular processes are expected to dominate the boundaries of these regimes are expressed in terms of two lengthscale ratios the ratio of the amplitude of the initial wave to the depth of the thermocline and the ratio of the depth of the thermocline to the overall depth of the lake comparison of the predictions of this timescale analysis with the results from both laboratory experiments and field observations confirms its applicability the results suggest that for small to medium sized lakes subject to a relatively uniform windstress an important mechanism for the degeneration of large scale internal waves is the generation of solitons by nonlinear steepening since solitons are likely to break at the sloping boundaries leading to localized turbulent mixing and enhanced dissipation the transfer of energy from an initial basin scale seiche to shorter solitons has important implications for the lake ecology

application of an internal tide generation model to baroclinic spring neap cycles 1 a numerical internal tide generation model is used to study the behavior of baroclinic spring neap cycles in open basins and channels the motivation for this study comes from an observation on tidal currents in faeroe shetland channel which is briefly described a surprisingly large baroclinic semidiurnal tidal signal is found in the lower part of the water column above the slope on the shetland side concurring with barotropic neap tides the numerical model results indeed show that the baroclinic spring neap cycle may have a phase shift with respect to the barotropic spring neap cycle and that the phase of the baroclinic cycle may vary strongly within short distances it is also shown that even small changes in the background conditions e g stratification can provoke a large phase shift in the baroclinic cycle a possible connection to intermittency is discussed

global positioning system measurements of the ionospheric zonal apparent velocity at cachoeira paulista in brazil ionospheric irregularities and their zonal apparent drift were studied using global positioning system gps measurements at cachoeira paulista 22 41 s 45 00 w 26 dip angle in brazil during november 6 19 1998 radio scintillations at the gps l1 frequency 1 575 ghz were monitored using four gps receivers spaced geomagnetically east west and north south total electron content tec was measured through the ionospheric advance of the gps l1 and l2 1 227 ghz phases strong amplitude scintillations coincided with tec fluctuations associated with spread f bubbles elongated along the magnetic field movement of the presnel scale 400 m ionospheric irregularity layers caused the scintillation to drift and their zonal apparent drift velocities were measured using a cross correlation technique our measurements show that the apparent eastward velocity varies from 200 m s to 150 m s at 2000 lt and then it decreases to 100 50 m s at midnight on a magnetically disturbed day reversal of the zonal apparent drift was observed just after midnight and the apparent westward velocities observed at early in the morning showed large variations with location in the sky from the receivers spaced in the geomagnetic north south direction we measured near zero time shifts from which we conclude that the correlation length of several hundred meter scale irregularities is much larger than 70 m separation between the north and south receivers

ionospheric scintillation observations at natal we report ionospheric scintillation observations made at natal brazil during a period of 2 years the nighttime scintillations of satellite signals at 250 mhz commonly exceeded 20 db peak to peak seasonally it showed a typical behavior for the south american sector with a single peak centered around october november months and the local evening hours of 2100 2300 lmt this seasonal behavior was different from that of the african sector and very different from that of the pacific sector on a spacing of 278 m the eastward irregularity drift speed was measured by the method of similar fades this together with the determination of fresnel frequency from the power spectrum analysis was used to calculate the height of the irregularity patch a value of 294 km was obtained multisatellite scintillation observations indicated that even though the initiation of an irregularity cloud commonly occurred earlier on signals transmitted by the eastern satellite there were substantial cases when the reverse was observed one case which was analyzed in detail suggested that the irregularity clouds formed independently along two radio paths separated by 520 km

ionospheric zonal velocities at conjugate points over brazil during the copex campaign experimental observations and theoretical validations 1 we analyze in detail the zonal velocities of large scale ionospheric plasma depletions over two conjugate stations inferred from oi 630 nm airglow all sky images obtained during the conjugate point equatorial experiment copex campaign carried out in brazil between october and november 2002 the conjugate stations were boa vista bv geogr 2 8n 60 7w dip angle 22 0 n and campo grande cg geogr 20 5s 54 7w dip angle 22 32 s over campo grande the zonal velocities were measured also by a system of spaced gps scintillation receivers the airglow zonal velocities at the conjugate sites were seen to agree very closely except for a slightly increased velocity over cg which we attribute to the presence of the geomagnetic anomaly the results show a high degree of alignment of the bubbles along the geomagnetic field lines during the bubble development phase and as the bubbles travel eastward thereby suggesting that the neutral zonal wind effect in the zonal plasma motion is an integrated effect along the flux tube the zonal velocities obtained from the gps technique were always larger than those calculated by the airglow technique which permitted observation of zonal plasma velocity shear between the altitudes of the airglow emitting layer and of the gps scintillation theoretical ambient plasma zonal velocities calculated using the formulations by haerendel et al 1992 and eccles 1998 are compared with the experimental results our results also reveal some degree of dependence of the zonal velocities on the solar flux f10 7 and magnetic kp indices during the copex period

on the latitudinal variations of the ionospheric electric field during magnetospheric disturbances a joint alert campaign was organized during the month of october 1980 by the incoherent scatter radars in the american sector namely jicamarca arecibo millstone hill and chatanika the campaign which met with success was designed to study the behavior of the ionospheric electric field as a function of latitude during magnetically active conditions the arecibo data in this campaign support present and previous observations at jicamarca that suggest that when the convection e field suddenly decreases the alfven layer shielding field becomes unbalanced and penetrates the plasmasphere while this type of observation is reasonably convincing others are more difficult to categorize we suggest that beside the high latitude electric fields time varying auroral conductivity models will have to be considered in order to understand the morphology of the low latitude e field disturbances we present the first correlation analysis and determination of the amplitude ratio of the disturbed zonal electric field at 30 geometric latitude arecibo to the field at 0 jicamarca other highlights of the paper are a discussion of dp2 which may help clarify the controversy surrounding it and a discussion of the sensitivity of low and mid latitude radars to disturbances of magnetospheric origin we show that this sensitivity maximizes at the magnetic equator

f region east west drifts at jicamarca f region east west drifts have been measured at jicamarca for almost 10 years using incoherent scatter the drifts are westward during the day and eastward at night the daytime drift velocities are about 50 m s and change very little with season or solar cycle the evening reversal occurs at about 1600 local time throughout the solar cycle the maximum nighttime eastward drifts are about 105 and 130 m s during solar minimum and maximum respectively the daytime and nighttime drifts show very litle variation with magnetic activity these jicamarca incoherent scatter results especially the reversal times differ appreciably from results obtained using other techniques but there appear to be fairly simple explanations for the apparent disagreements

near bed solibores over the continental slope in the faeroe shetland channel abstract on two occasions within a 12 day measurement period in the faeroe shetland channel strongly nonlinear wave trains were observed at the sea bed propagating up the continental slope in water depths 450 m the events were separated by a period of 4 days and whilst resembling in appearance a density current running up a slope are termed solibores displaying the properties of both turbulent internal bores and nonlinear internal solitary waves isw each solibore displays a steep leading edge followed by a train of nonlinear waves with amplitudes of o 10 m and periods of 5 20 min wave induced particle velocities are consistent with isw whilst a zone of strong horizontal convergence at the leading edge of the solibores causes the formation of a rotor with flow in the opposite sense to a forward overturning surface wave in both cases upward vertical velocities 10 cm s 1 are immediately followed by a return downward flow of equal magnitude a ctd and microstructure transect conducted during the passage of the first solibore illustrates its behaviour as an up slope intrusion of cold dense water with concurrent rates of turbulent dissipation e of o 10 7 w kg 1 and resulting in short term maximum vertical diffusivities kz of o 10 1 m2 s 1 in the long term however kz 140 days which again indicate intermittency in periods of enhanced sediment flux the solibores are consistent with the results of numerical and laboratory experiments on hydraulic jumps resulting from shoaling isw the influence of the slope is proposed to be the reason for their slightly different forms and effects on sediment transport thus the first solibore propagating directly up the slope is proposed to result from an overturning hydraulic jump caused by kinematic instabilities and which subsequently forms a horizontal density intrusion the second solibore represents a dispersive wave train due its oblique direction of propagation which reduces the effective bottom slope allowing dispersion to balance nonlinear effects and prohibiting overturning

airglow characteristics of equatorial plasma depletions a new low light level all sky 6300 a airglow imaging system has been developed for ground based studies of the optical signatures of equatorial plasma depletions the system was designed for narrowband interference filters 6 a full width at half power with interchangeable all sky 180 and narrow field 60 lenses and records images photographically by using a standard 35 mm camera a field test of the apparatus was conducted on ascension island 8 0 s 14 4 w from january 24 to february 10 1981 the photographs were analyzed for broad morphological characteristics by using simple overlay techniques augmented by digital image processing methods to extract more quantitative detail the initial results to come from these observations show that airglow depletions occur most often during the 2030 2330 lt period often covering one fourth of the visible sky they extend from the magnetic equator to beyond the crest of the equatorial anomaly with east west cross sections of 100 km to several hundred kilometers they are usually not aligned with magnetic meridians showing a progressive skewness to the west at further distances from the equator several cases of apparently twisting overlapping and bifurcating depletions were observed the depletions drifted to the east with speeds that decreased from 190 m s at 2100 lt to 80 m s at 0100 lt the airglow intensities within depletions were typically 40 50 of the background levels and the western walls of the depletions usually had a steeper gradient than the corresponding eastern walls

mid latitude ionospheric irregularities persisting into late morning during the magnetic storm on 19 march 2001 1 post sunrise intense ionospheric irregularities at low to mid latitudes are reported for the first time a method based on spaced receiver technique is proposed to estimate the apparent drift velocity of the irregularities by using the correlation of the slant total electron content tec from 3 gps receivers the irregularities were detected at 23 45 n by the gps earth observation network geonet of japan from 0455 lt to 1051 lt on 21 march 2001 during the recovery phase of the magnetic storm at the corresponding time spread f was observed with 3 ionosondes located meridionally at okinawa 127 8 e 26 3 n 20 7 n magnetic latitude kokubunji 139 5 e 35 7 n 30 0 n magnetic latitude and wakkanai 141 7 e 45 4 n 40 5 n magnetic latitude while an intense negative ionospheric storm was processing and propagating from mid to lower latitudes the irregularities were seen as plasma bubbles by the defense meteorological satellite program dmsp in situ measurements westward drift with the speed of 100 m s was estimated by spaced receivers from geonet and confirmed by dmsp during the evolution of the irregularities the plasma bubbles at mid latitude sustained 1 5 hour after sunrise and at the lower latitudes they survived more than 4 hours after sunrise the observations suggested that the irregularities were generated by an eastward electric field associated with the disturbance dynamo and the long time existence of the irregularities after sunrise seemed to be related to the daytime intense negative ionospheric storm on 21 march

magnetospheric disturbance induced equatorial plasma bubble development and dynamics a case study in brazilian sector 1 equatorial ionospheric plasma bubble irregularity development and dynamics during the major magnetospheric storm of 26 august 1998 are investigated using the data collected by a multistation and multi instrument diagnostic network operated at equatorial and low latitude sites in brazil and auroral electrojet activity au al imf and dst indices a magnetospheric disturbance onset in the morning of 26 august 1998 was initiated by a solar wind shock and associated imf bz polarity reversals and ssc that were soon followed by a succession of substorm like auroral electrojet ae intensifications and dst development an imf bz southward turning and associated ae intensifications in the brazilian dusk sector produced intense prompt penetration eastward electric field that caused large f region vertical drift and consequently the developments of intense postsunset equatorial anomaly and a series of intense plasma bubbles the latter event lasting the entire night as observed by digital ionosondes at sao luis 2 33 s 315 8 e dip angle 5 and fortaleza 3 9 s 321 55 w dip angle 9 and an all sky imager two scanning photometers and a digisonde at the low latitude site cachoeira paulista 22 6 s 315 e dip angle 28 a notable aspect of the dynamics of the bubbles was their initially very low eastward drift velocity which turned into steadily increasing westward velocity that lasted till early morning hours the results show for the first time a relationship between the zonal drift velocities of optically observed large scale bubbles tens to hundreds of kilometers and that of the smaller scale kilometer sizes structures as observed by a digital ionosonde the results point to the dominant role of a disturbance dynamo associated westward thermospheric wind to maintain the plasma irregularity drift increasingly westward going into postmidnight hours as an important finding the results further show that significant contribution to the westward plasma bubble irregularity drift normally attributed to disturbance dynamo effect could arise from prompt penetration disturbance zonal electric field in the course of a disturbance sequence lasting several hours such effect is attributed to hall electric field arising from the primary disturbance zonal electric field under enhanced nighttime ionospheric conductivities produced possibly by storm associated particle precipitation in the brazilian longitude sector in agreement with recent evidences abdu et al 1998b

time evolution and dynamics of equatorial backscatter plumes 1 growth phase much of our understanding of equatorial spread f phenomena has resulted from vhf radar studies of backscatter plumes i e patterns of backscatter that appear to extend from the bottomside into the topside of the f layer by using altair a fully steerable backscatter radar to map selected plumes repeatedly it was found that the dynamic behavior of plumes can be characterized by a growth and a decay phase the growth phase characteristics described in this paper are found to be generally consistent with equatorial irregularity generation as predicted by the rayleigh taylor and gradient drift instabilities in particular 1 plumes are generated primarily in the local time around f layer sunset 2 plumes develop from local perturbations in plasma density in the bottomside of the f layer 3 plumes develop upward with growth velocities ranging from 125 to 350 m s and 4 backscatter strength increases during upward plume development and decreases when upward plume growth slows or ceases however certain characteristics namely an east west asymmetry in backscatter strength found in the bottomside f layer have been found that suggest key roles played by the eastward neutral wind and by altitude modulation of the bottomside f layer in establishing the initial conditions for plume growth

effects of solar and geomagnetic activities on the zonal drift of equatorial plasma bubbles equatorial plasma bubbles are mostly generated in the postsunset sector and then move in the zonal direction plasma bubbles can last for several hours and move over hundreds of kilometers even more than 1000 km in this study we use measurements of ion density by the communication navigation outage forecasting system satellite to determine the orbit averaged drift velocity of plasma bubbles the objective of the study is to identify the dependence of the bubble drift on the solar radio flux and geomagnetic activities in total 5463 drift velocities are derived over may 2008 to april 2014 and a statistical analysis is performed the average pattern of the bubble drift is in good agreement with the zonal drift of the equatorial f region plasma the zonal drift velocity of plasma bubbles increases with the solar radio flux however the increase shows different features at different local times geomagnetic activities cause a decrease of the eastward drift velocity of plasma bubbles equivalent to the occurrence of a westward drift through disturbance dynamo process in particular the decrease of the eastward drift velocity appears to become accelerated when the dst index is smaller than 60 nt or kp is larger than 4

effect of geomagnetic activity on equatorial radio vhf scintillations and spread f the paper discusses the occurrence of scintillations of ats 3 137 mhz beacons recorded at huancayo on geomagnetically quiet and disturbed days during the years 1969 1976 and compares the results with the corresponding occurrence of range and frequency spread f at huancayo during the equinoctial months and the december solsticial months the geomagnetic activity reduces the equatorial scintillations during premidnight hours but increases their occurrence during the postmidnight hours these features are very similar to the effect of geomagnetic activity on the occurrence of the range type of equatorial spread f rather than on the occurrence of frequency spread which decreases for any hour of the night during geomagnetic active periods during the june solsticial months the occurrence of both scintillations and spread f is very much reduced however both the phenomena are more frequent on disturbed than on quiet days for any of the hours of the night these effects are consistently the same for any of the years within the solar cycle it is suggested that the equatorial radio scintillations at 137 mhz during the nighttime are produced primarily by the occurrence of the range type of spread f the geomagnetic effects are due to the modifications of the equatorial electric field by the geomagnetic disturbance and thereby affect the development of f region irregularities causing scintillations