Equatorial Ionization Anomaly Variations During Geomagnetic Storms

The equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) was discovered in the 1940s. Since then, the research on ionospheric storm effects at the equatorial and low latitudes has become one of the hottest topics in the ionospheric community. During the past 2 decades, large amounts of ionospheric and thermospheric data from the ground-based and satellite-borne observations and also from the novel capability of three-dimensional numerical models stimulated the ionospheric weather studies. Recent scientific progresses on the EIA response to geomagnetic storms are briefly described here, together with some suggestions for the future research directions of the EIA storm effects.