This is a proposal to develop a software package which, when interfaced to a time evolving ionospheric representation, will yield quantitative information about the growth and development of ionospheric irregularities at high latitudes. The software package will interface descriptions of irregularity growth and decay with a time dependent ionospheric model. As a proof of concept, the investigators will develop a module that describes the growth rate of the gradient drift instability in the high latitude ionosphere. The distribution of irregularities and their time histories on specified magnetic flux tubes will be computed and graphically displayed. These distributions will be compared with those obtained for scintillations measurements. Future updates to this instability model will be relatively straightforward because the platform will be developed to have a modular interface to the instability model. The overriding objective of this study is to demonstrate that adequate progress has been made in large-scale ionospheric modeling to the point that both gradients in plasma density and electric field structures are adequate to produce meaningful estimates of the lower limits to the gradient drift instability growth rate on a global scale.
