** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is the official journal of the Japan Geoscience Union, published in collaboration with its 51 society members.
** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is partly financially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Publication of Scientific Research Results to enhance dissemination of information of scientific research.
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Space and planetary sciences
201712201712
A review on the numerical simulation of equatorial plasma bubbles toward scintillation evaluation and forecasting
Yokoyama T
Equatorial ionosphere, Equatorial spread F, Equatorial plasma bubbles, Numerical simulation, Scintillation, High-performance computing, Space weather
An example of numerical simulation results of equatorial plasma bubbles
Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) have been a longstanding and increasingly important subject because they cause severe scintillations in radio waves from Global Navigation Satellite System satellites. The phenomenon was found in the 1930s as irregular ionosonde observations and was termed equatorial spread F (ESF). ESF is interpreted as plasma density irregularities associated with EPBs that have nonlinearly evolved into the topside ionosphere. Numerical simulations have been powerful tools to study the fully nonlinear evolution of EPBs, which cannot be wholly understood from theoretical predictions. In this paper, historical achievements in the numerical simulation of EPBs are reviewed, and future directions toward scintillation evaluation and forecast are discussed.
