Abstract. An ionosonde network consisting of a meridional chain and an equatorial pair was established in the Southeast Asian area. Three of four ionosondes are along the magnetic meridian of 100 • E; two are close to the magnetic conjugate points in Northern Thailand and West Sumatra, Indonesia, and the other is near the magnetic equator in the Malay Peninsula, Thailand. The fourth ionosonde is also near the magnetic equator in Vietnam but separated by about 6.3 • towards east from the meridional chain. For a preliminary data analysis, nighttime ionospheric height variations at the three stations of the meridional chain were examined. The results demonstrate that the coordination of the network has a great potential for studying ionosphere/thermosphere dynamics. Through the assistance of model calculations, thermospheric neutral winds were inferred and compared with the HWM93 empirical thermospheric wind model. Higherorder wind variations that are not represented in the empirical model were found.
[1] The results from simultaneous observations of the nighttime transequatorial propagation (TEP) of HF radio waves between Australia and Japan and the GPS scintillation measurements in south China and Vietnam are presented in this paper. The results showed that there was good correspondence between the nighttime eastward traveling off-great circle propagation (OGCP) of broadcasting waves of Radio Australia from Shepparton, Australia, measured at Oarai, Japan, and the scintillations in GPS radio waves at Hainan, China. This shows that the nighttime eastward traveling OGCP in HF TEP is caused by a large-scale ionospheric structure associated with a plasma bubble. The zonal drift velocities of the large-scale ionospheric structure estimated by the change in the direction of arrival of the OGCP were similar to those of the small-scale irregularities associated with plasma bubbles measured by the GPS scintillation spaced-receiver technique. Our results show that the HF TEP measurement is quite useful for monitoring the plasma bubble occurrence over a wide area and for forecasting the arrival of the plasma bubble at places located to the east of it.
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