Comparing plasma irregularities across scale sizes with GOLD and COSMIC

Abstract:

Near the geomagnetic equator, large plumes of low density plasma (whimsically referred to as “bubbles”) can form when low-altitude plasma is lifted up hundreds of kilometers, piercing through the higher density plasma in the ionospheric layer. This uplift is caused by a Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the bottomside ionosphere, which can grow over the course of several hours. These structures (10s-100s km scale size) can lead to the formation of small-scale (10s-100s m scale size) irregularities in the vicinity of large plasma density gradients. These smaller scale structures are important because they are of the right scale size to interfere with GPS signals. This study will compare the formation times of the meso-scale bubbles from space-borne airglow images from GOLD with the fine-scale S4 measurements from the COSMIC spacecraft.