Detección de burbujas de plasma en la ionosfera ecuatorial africana en 2004 usando registros de sTEC

Abstract

Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) are ionospheric plasma density field-aligned depletions that grow from irregularilies caused by the generalized Rayleigh-Taylor instability mechanism in the post-sunsel equalorial sector. We describe herein a methodology implemenled lo detect EPBs using slant total eleclron content (sTEC) by means 01 subtracting their Irend against Universal Time from the original data. In addition, this procedure allows us lo estimate EPBs size by measuring the amplitude variation in the resulting graphs. As a case 01study, we present the preliminary results obtained by applying this method lo the available calibraled data olsTEC taken every 10 minutes from EGNOS Tesl Bed (BRAZ, DOUA, LOME, and NDJA) and IGS (ASCI, MAL!, and NKLG) stations with the aim 01 detecting plasma bubbles in the African equatorial regio n during 2004.