Causal links to persisting daytime equatorial plasma bubbles over Asia-Pacific region following the geomagnetic storm on 01 December 2023

P K Rajesh; C H Charles Lin; Y Otsuka; M Yamamoto; S P Chen; C Y Lin; T Matsuo; M Nishioka; S Perwitasari; H Jin; J M Choi

doi:10.1038/s41598-025-08791-9

Causal links to persisting daytime equatorial plasma bubbles over Asia-Pacific region following the geomagnetic storm on 01 December 2023

Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):21500. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-08791-9.

Authors

P K Rajesh¹, C H Charles Lin², Y Otsuka³, M Yamamoto⁴, S P Chen¹, C Y Lin^{5

6}, T Matsuo⁷, M Nishioka⁸, S Perwitasari⁸, H Jin⁸, J M Choi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
² Department of Earth Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. charles@mail.ncku.edu.tw.
³ Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
⁴ Research Institute of Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
⁵ Center for Astronautical Physics and Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Space Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
⁷ Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
⁸ National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

A strong geomagnetic storm that occurred on 01-December-2023 triggered unusual equatorial plasma bubbles (EPB) over 100-140°E longitudes, which persisted for several hours after sunrise on the next day. FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 and ground-based global navigation satellite system observations, and Global Ionospheric Specification (GIS) electron density are used to investigate this long-lasting unseasonal EPB episode in the solstice period over Asia-Pacific. The results show that in presence of elevated F-layer bottom-side aided by prompt penetration electric field (PPEF), large-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (LSTID) generated by high-latitude Joule heating seeded the instability soon after sunset. However, it is a second phase of reinforced EPBs generated in the post-midnight period triggered by another group of larger LSTIDs that uncharacteristically prolonged into daytime hours. The GIS observations further provide evidence that the extremely low background ionization on the following day due to composition changes during the negative storm phase enabled these EPBs to survive even after sunrise before the depleted flux tubes were refilled by fresh ionization. The coordinated ground- and space-based observations demonstrate the causal links for the rare unseasonal EPBs occurring in the post-sunset and post-midnight periods over the same longitude sector and the latter persisting several hours after sunrise with potentially enduring space weather implications on satellite communication and navigation.

Keywords: Daytime EPBs; Equatorial plasma bubble; FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2; Geomagnetic storm; Global ionosphere specification; Long lasting plasma bubbles.

Abstract

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