This study concerns postmidnight ionospheric irregularities observed during low solar activity conditions. We analyze data from digisondes and optical imaging systems located in an equatorial region over Brazil. The results show that they occur under unfavorable and unexpected conditions. This work can be useful for space weather forecasting during low solar activity.

Equatorial ionospheric irregularities have a significant detrimental impact on a variety of space application systems in navigation and communication areas that utilize satellites, especially the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) network. The development of these irregularities in the nighttime ionosphere is controlled primarily by ionospheric electric fields and instabilities. The effect of magnetic disturbance on these electric fields and on the irregularities is investigated here.

We present new results on the behavior of sporadic E layers (Es layers) using GPS (global positioning system) radio occultation (RO) measurements obtained from the FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC satellites and digisonde data over Cachoeira Paulista, a low-latitude station in Brazil.

This work presents four events of mesosphere fronts observed on King George Island, Antarctic Peninsula, in the year 2011. The atmospheric background environment was analyzed to investigate the propagation conditions for all cases. To investigate the sources for such cases, satellite images were used. In two cases, we found that strong tropospheric instabilities were potential sources, and in the other two cases, it was not possible to associate them with tropospheric sources.

This paper analyzes the influence of the recent deep and prolonged solar minimum on the daytime zonal and vertical plasma drift velocities during quiet time over Jicamarca, Peru. Our results show that an anomalously low zonal wind was mainly responsible for the observed anomalous behavior in the zonal drift followed by a decrease in the E-region conductivity and the dynamo electric field during 2008.

A comparative study of the quasi-16-day wave in the middle from three Brazilian stations, indicates multiple modes of the concerned wave component. The wave amplitude shows maxima in summer and winter. A potential coupling of the concerned wave with other short period planetary waves is found. The dominant wave components vary from the westward to eastward from the tropical to mid-latitude in the stratosphere. The prevailing westerly wind may favor the wave filtering of westward waves.

Multi-year observations of gravity wave momentum fluxes have been analyzed at three different sites using meteor radar data. This is a first, as no such experimental results on the latitudinal dependence of these parameters at low latitudes had been derived with ground-based instruments in the MLT region before. Until now similar studies had been carried out with satellites and circulation models. Therefore this thematic can be lead to a valuable scientific contribution.