Travelling Wave Packets Generated by the Solar Terminator in the Upper Atmosphere

For the first time, the morphology of a new type of midlatitude, medium scale, travelling ionospheric disturbances—travelling wave packets (TWPs)—is presented with the use of total electron content (TEC) measurements from the data of a global net of GPS receivers over a long time period from 1998 to 2007. The total amount of registered TWPs exceeds 275 000. In the context of time, TWPs are narrow-band TEC oscillations of an hour length with a period of about 10-20 min. TWPs are predominantly observed within 3 h after passing the morning solar terminator, when the TEC derivatives reach their maximum.

E. L. Afraimovich, I. K. Edemskiy, S. V. Voeykov, Yu. V. Yasyukevich, and I. V. Zhivetiev. Travelling Wave Packets Generated by the Solar Terminator in the Upper Atmosphere. // Atmospheric and Oceanic Optics, 2010, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 21-27.