Multi-scale ionospheric irregularities occurrence over South America during the St. Patrick's day storm on March 17, 2015

During the solar cycle 24 there was a very intense geomagnetic storm due to the St. Patrick's day storm and the effects of this storm on ionosphere has become a topic of extensive space weather investigation. Up to now several aspects of the St. Patrick's ionospheric storm have been study such as the prompt penetration electric fields (PPEFs), TEC changes, electron density disturbances, plasma drift, O+ concentration modification, hemispherical asymmetry developments, equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) modification, and ionospheric irregularities. Besides all these important studies, there are some essential aspects, which have not been addressed yet, related to the occurrence of multi-scale ionospheric irregularities. In this paper, we present and discuss the generation and suppression of multi-scale ionospheric irregularities, using the observations conducted in the Latin American Sector from 4 ionosondes, 20 dual frequency GPS stations, and JULIA radar observations during the month of March 2015, which includes the St. Patrick's day geomagnetic storm period. Suppression of large-small scales ionospheric irregularities has occurred during the main and second night of the recovery phases. However, during the first night of recovery phase there was post-midnight ionospheric irregularities.