New observations of ionospheric instabilities in the equatorial electrojet

The equatorial electrojet (EEJ) is an intense current system flowing along the magnetic equator in the ionospheric E-region on the day-side. Early attempts to model the EEJ found that ionospheric instabilities led to significant changes in the current which had to be accounted for. Early modelers used ad-hoc empirical correction factors in the relevant ionospheric parameters to attempt to account for instability effects. Modern EEJ models continue to use these correction factors, which are still not well understood theoretically. In the last decade, a wealth of new data has been recorded by both satellites and ground radars which allows us to revisit the issue of modeling these ionospheric instabilities. In this work, we use radar and magnetic field measurements at Jicamarca in addition to magnetometer measurements from the CHAMP satellite to study the effects of ionospheric instabilities on the EEJ. We find that the effects of ionospheric instabilities lead to non-linear behavior between the eastward electric field strength and the resulting electrojet current. As predicted, the ratio of current to electric field is highest for westward and weak eastward electric fields, and the ratio decreases with stronger eastward electric fields. Quantifying this non-linearity should help improve the accuracy of equatorial electrodynamic models.