The Role of Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs) as a Possible Seeding Mechanism for Equatorial Plasma Bubbles (EPBs)

We investigate the characteristics of TIDs and their possible role as seeding mechanisms for EPBs. A database of identified EPB occurrences and the associated ionospheric characteristics (ion drifts, composition, etc.) was created using data from the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite during its entire mission, starting in August 2008 and ending in November 2015. The presence of TIDs concurrent with the EPBs and their characteristics (wavelength, propagation speed, orientation, etc.) are determined by ground-based GPS total electron content (TEC) measurements and investigated for their role as a possible EPB seeding mechanism.