The Earth's Ionosphere

Although interesting in its own right, due to the ever increasing use of satellites for communication and navigation, weather in the ionosphere is of great concern. Every such system uses trans-ionospheric propagation of radiowaves, waves which must traverse the often turbulent ionosphere. Understanding this turbulence and predicting it are one of the major goals of the National Space Weather program. Acquiring such a prediction capability will rest on understanding the very topics of this book, the plasma physics and electrodynamics of the system.

*Fully updated to reflect advances in the field in the 20 years since the first edition published
*Explores the buffeting of the ionosphere from above by the sun and from below by the lower atmosphere
*Unique text appropriate both as a refence and for coursework.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introductory and Background Material

Chapter 2 Fundamentals of Ionospheric and Magnetospheric Plasma Dynamics

Chapter 3 Dynamics and Electrodynamics of the Equatorial Zone

Chapter 4 Equatorial Plasma Instabilities and Mesospheric Turbulence

Chapter 5 Hydro- and Electro-dynamics of The Mid-Latitude Ionosphere

Chapter 6 Waves and Instabilities at Mid-Latitudes

Chapter 7 Dynamics and Electrodynamics of the Mesosphere

Chapter 8 High-Latitude Electrodynamics

Chapter 9 Ionospheric Response to Electric Fields

Chapter 10 Instabilities and Structure in the High-Latitude Ionosphere

Appendix A Ionospheric Measurement Techniques

Appendix B Reference Material and Equations