Simultaneous observations of equatorial plasma bubbles with an all-sky airglow imager and a HF Doppler sounding system in Taiwan

Abstract

High-Frequency Doppler (HFD) sounders at low-latitudes often detect characteristic oblique spreading Doppler traces in the spectrogram, known as Oblique Spread Structure (OSS). OSS has been expected to be generated by the dispersion of radio wave reflection due to equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs). However, it has not yet been confirmed whether OSS is surely a manifestation of EPB by conducting simultaneous observations of EPB and OSS with different observational techniques. Additionally, it remains unclear what kinds of properties of EPB are reflected in the fine structure of OSS. In this study, we investigated three cases of OSSs and EPBs simultaneously observed by a HFD sounding system and an all-sky airglow imager in Taiwan. For the three cases presented here, the timing of OSS occurrence in the HFD data well coincided with that of the EPB appearance in the airglow data. The frequency shift of OSS is quantitatively explained assuming a radio wave reflection at 250–300 km altitudes. These results strongly indicate that OSS is formed by electron density variations at F-region altitudes accompanying EPB; thus, OSS is a manifestation of EPB in the HFD observations. Furthermore, it was suggested that the fine structure of OSS reflected the branching structure of EPB when the multiple branches of EPB reached the intermediate reflection point of the HFD observation. The detection of EPB occurrence and its fine structure using HFD observation enables monitoring of EPB regardless of weather conditions, which will contribute to monitoring the space weather impact of EPBs, for example, on GNSS navigation, in a wide area. Graphical Abstract