A review on the numerical simulation of equatorial plasma bubbles toward scintillation evaluation and forecasting

Abstract

Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) have been a longstanding and increasingly important subject because they cause severe scintillations in radio waves from Global Navigation Satellite System satellites. The phenomenon was found in the 1930s as irregular ionosonde observations and was termed equatorial spread F (ESF). ESF is interpreted as plasma density irregularities associated with EPBs that have nonlinearly evolved into the topside ionosphere. Numerical simulations have been powerful tools to study the fully nonlinear evolution of EPBs, which cannot be wholly understood from theoretical predictions. In this paper, historical achievements in the numerical simulation of EPBs are reviewed, and future directions toward scintillation evaluation and forecast are discussed. [Figure not available: see fulltext.].