The upper atmosphere is full of peculiar phenomena and one important one for communication and navigation is equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs). These are hot pockets of superheated gas that form at low latitudes, usually after sunset. They remain poorly understood and, since they affect Earth’s connection to space, it’s important to know what’s going on. And some of them have been discovered. detected precisely over the pyramids of Egypt.
EPBs change from season to season, a bit like the weather. But unlike the weather, They are also affected by solar activity: After all, they are space weather. Being able to predict them, across multiple properties such as location, size and timing, could be crucial to reducing the large disturbances that satellites experience.
Satellites are used for communications, navigation and financeThese disturbances may be limited to a narrow strip of the Earth, but in this interconnected world, they affect us all.
The discovery of a huge plasma bubble over Egypt is not in itself big news. Dozens of such EPBs form every year over that specific region. What is interesting is where the bubble was observed from. Generally, these observations are usually made from space to get a global view. They can also be made from the ground, observing the closest region of the ionosphere, however, thanks to the curvature of ground-based radar, it can be difficult to see targets below the horizon. Now, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences report that a detection over Egypt from Hainan Island in the South China Sea. 8,000 kilometers away.
There, China has built the Long-Range Low-Latitude Ionospheric Radar, or LARID. This is a radar system that can monitor irregularities created by plasma bubbles. Just as radio transmissions can be sent around the world by being reflected off the plasma in the ionosphere, radar can be sent out in the same way. LARID’s capability is to receive the signals back and interpret them as the variation created by these plasma bubbles. Its detection range is no less than 9,600 km, a distance that has tripled in less than half a year. as their performance has improved.
What is extraordinary, therefore, is the ability of this Chinese radar to see changes in real time from thousands of kilometres away. Those responsible for the discovery, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggest that The creation of a network of such radars could be revolutionary. to monitor these events.
“The results provide significant information for building a future low-latitude Over-The-Horizon (OTH) radar network, consisting of three or four OTH radars and could have the ability to obtain global EPBs in real time“, the study notes.