Preface

Prof. Jules Aarons, a highly distinguished Scientist, was honored during the EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly held at Nice, France, in April 2003, at a special session on “Equatorial and Low Latitude Aeronomy”. At the time of the Assembly some preliminary discussions were held with Dr. Mark Lester, one of the Topical Editors of Annales Geophysicae, regarding the possibility of having a special issue/section of Annales Geophysicae in honor of Prof. Aarons with some of the papers presented in the special session. Later on the discussions were continued with Dr. Denis Alcaydé, Editor in Chief, Annales Geophysicae, who very kindly agreed for a special issue on “Equatorial and low latitude aeronomy”, not restricted to the papers presented at the EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly but open to wider contributions. The response to the call for papers from the scientific community was overwhelming and we would like to thank the contributing authors for kindly choosing this special issue for presenting their paper. Our thanks to the reviewers for kindly providing many constructive comments and suggestions.

Our grateful thanks to Dr. Denis Alcaydé and Dr. Mark Lester for kindly agreeing to our request for a special issue of Annales Geophysicae. We would like to thank Dr. Sunanda Basu for kindly providing the guest editorial entitled “Jules Aarons – Space scientist and mentor”. We would also like to convey our thanks to Mrs. Sylviane Perret, Editorial Executive of Annales Geophysicae, for all the kind help rendered during the course of preparation of the special issue.

Y. Sahai, K. Shiokawa, and C. E. Valladares

Guest Editors