Large scale turbulence in the equatorial electrojet

The turbulent dynamics of kilometer-scale irregularities of the daytime equatorial electrojet are studied analytically and numerically, within the framework of a two-fluid nonlocal theory of the gradient drift instability. The emphasis is on the effects of including the altitude variations of the relevant physical parameters, such as mobilities and diffusion coefficients, on the nonlinear evolution of the instability. In the linear regime, researchers investigated how the nonlocal modes differ from the local ones by applying eikonal analysis to the motion of wave packets propagating in a inhomogeneous medium. The mechanism by which velocity shear can stabilize part of the linearly unstable spectrum is discussed and described in detail