Upwelling Metallic Ions Producing Valley Region Irregularities Over Low Latitude During the 2025 New Year Magnetic Storm
Abstract Valley region irregularities (VRIs) have been previously investigated using radar, ionosonde, and rocket‐borne in situ observations. In this paper, based on a joint observational experiment by lidar and radars performed in Hainan, China, we report a case of low‐latitude VRIs generated in association with uplifted metallic ions for the first time, which was observed during the 2025 New Year magnetic storm. The uplifted ions accumulated at valley region altitudes ∼150 km where VRIs were generated. It is suggested that the metallic ion uplifting could be driven by storm‐time eastward penetration electric fields and/or polarization electric fields associated with equatorial plasma bubbles. It is hypothesized that the observed ion layer was formed by ion convergence produced by the joint action of electric field and meridional neutral wind and became unstable by the gradient drift instability generating the VRIs.
Authors
- Jianfei Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8190-4702)
- Wenjie Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3129-5350)
- Zhaoguo Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9121-7234)
- Septi Perwitasari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5108-0077)
- Chunxiao Yan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6138-308X)
- Guozhu Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7669-3590)
- Lianhuan Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0104-3059)
- Haiyong Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0054-211X)
- T. Yokoyama (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8392-6455)
- Yajun Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0648-1373)
- Biqiang Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0553-9473)
- Jing Jiao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8489-7489)
- Guotao Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5455-0396)
- X. G. Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0057-1556)
Institutions
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Kyoto University (JP)
- National Space Science Center (CN)
- Institute of Geology and Geophysics (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (JP)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Published
- 2025-12-18
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl116542
- Primary Topic
- Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- National Key Research and Development Program of China