HR: 1340h
AN: SA43A-1104    [Abstracts]
TI: Hurricane-generated gravity waves as a trigger of ionospheric plasma instabilities
AU: * Wolven, B C
EM: brian.wolven@jhuapl.edu
AF: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723
AU: Paxton, L J
EM: larry.paxton@jhuapl.edu
AF: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723
AB: We examine the potential role of gravity waves generated by intense tropospheric weather disturbances (e.g., hurricanes and typhoons) as a seeding mechanism for instabilities in the low latitude ionosphere (plasma bubbles). It has been noted that the regions of maximum occurrence of equatorial spread-F over West Africa and South America appear to coincide with regions of high thunderstorm activity (e.g., Kazimirovsky, 1983). Mid-latitude ionospheric disturbances have also been attributed to gravity wave seeding of the Perkins instability and the coupled sporadic E layer instability (Cosgrove et al., 2004). We discuss the mechanisms by which storm-generated internal gravity waves may couple to the low-latitude ionosphere, and examine the four year record of GUVI OI 1356 airglow images for observational evidence of such a connection.
DE: 0310 Airglow and aurora
DE: 2415 Equatorial ionosphere
DE: 2427 Ionosphere/atmosphere interactions (0335)
DE: 2439 Ionospheric irregularities
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005