The upper atmosphere in the equatorial and low-latitude regions is fairly different from that at other latitudes due to the fact that in these regions the geomagnetic field is nearly parallel to the Earth's surface. This needs many more multi-instrument and multisite investigations as much of this region is occupied by developing or underdeveloped countries. The MLT (mesosphere and lower thermosphere) region studies are still in initial stages. Better and improved specifications of the ionosphere and thermosphere system are necessary for new areas like space weather and space climate.

The objective of the proposed special issue is to provide a forum for articles (this will include both invited and contributed papers) related to the recent advances in the field of equatorial and low-latitude regions of mesosphere, thermosphere, and ionosphere from observational (ground-based and space-borne), theoretical, and simulation studies. Contributions related to all aspects in this area are welcome. Some of the topics for the special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Coupling between the lower and upper atmosphere
• Mesospheric, thermospheric, and ionospheric processes
• Long- and short-period variability
• Ionospheric irregularities and scintillations
• Prediction of equatorial spread-F (ESF)
• The F3 layer
• Storm and substorm effects
• Latitudinal and/or longitudinal variability including development and decay of equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA)
• Effects of severe space weather events
• Nowcasting/forecasting and modeling of ionosphere for different applications
• Novel observational techniques including ionospheric tomography

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijgp/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: