Hurricane-generated gravity waves as a trigger of ionospheric plasma instabilities

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.