Study of the equatorial and low-latitude total electron content response to plasma bubbles during solar cycle 24–25 over the Brazilian region using a Disturbance Ionosphere indeX

Abstract

This work uses the Disturbance Ionosphere indeX (DIX) to evaluate the ionospheric responses to equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) events from 2013 to 2020 over the Brazilian equatorial and low latitudes. We have compared the DIX variations during EPBs to ionosonde and All-Sky Imager data, aiming to evaluate the physical characteristics of these events. Our results show that the DIX was able to detect EPB-related TEC disturbances in terms of their intensity and occurrence times. Thus, the EPB-related DIX responses agreed with the ionosphere behavior before, during, and after the studied cases. Finally, we found that the magnitude of those disturbances followed most of the trends of solar activity, meaning that the EPB-related total electron content variations tend to be higher (lower) in high (low) solar activity.