Case study of an Equatorial Plasma Bubble Event investigated by multiple ground-based instruments at low latitudes over China

Observational evidence is insufficient to understand how equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) form over low latitudes. The mechanism of plasma-density enhancement (formation of “plasma blobs”) at low latitudes is in dispute. In this paper, we use data from multiple ground-based instruments (one all-sky airglow imager, five digisondes, and one Fabry–Perot interferometer) to investigate the evolution of an EPB event that occurred at low latitudes over China on the night of 06 December 2015 (06-Dec-2015). We provide observational evidence that an enhanced equatorward wind most likely induced by a substorm could have initiated the Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) that destabilized several EPB depletions in an upwelling region of a large-scale wave-like structure (LSWS) in the bottomside ionosphere. Those EPB depletions were forced to surge poleward, from nearly 10° to 19° magnetic latitude, two hours before midnight. Smaller-scale bifurcations evolved rapidly from tips of airglow depletions by a secondary E × B instability when the aforementioned substorm-induced southwestward wind blew through. During the growth phase of the EPB depletions, a westward polarization electric field inside the LSWS is likely to have compressed plasma downward, inducing the two airglow-type blobs observed in the bottomside ionosphere, by a mechanism of LSWS-blob connection that we propose. We also provide observational evidence of brightness airglow depletions. We find that an enhanced poleward wind associated with a passing-by brightness wave (BW) is likely to have transported plasma to fill the airglow depletions, which finally evolved into brightness airglow structures. This study investigates the physical processes accompanied by the EPB event and those two-airglow blobs observed at low-latitudes over China.