This work was supported in part by ID Quantique, CFI, OIT, NSERC RTI, the NSERC SPG FREQUENCY, the NSERC Discovery Program, the CRC Program, Connaught Innovation fund and Industry Canada. We thank A. Ignjatovic, Pedro Palacios-Avila, Z. Tang and Francisco de Zela for valuable discussions. Particularly, F. Xu and K. Wei thank V. Makarov for his hospitality during their visit to IQC. We acknowledge the support from the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Fellowship, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61178010), China Scholarship Council (No. 201406470051), the University of Hong Kong Physics Department Summer Overseas Research Program and the Science Faculty Overseas Research Fellowship, CONCYTEC-Peru, USEQIP, the IQC Summer URA, the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowships Program and CryptoWork...

During geomagnetically quiet and solar minimum conditions, spatial variations of the early morning thermosphere‐ionosphere (TI) system are expected to be mainly governed by wave dynamics. To study the postmidnight dynamical coupling, we investigated the early morning equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) using Global‐scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) measurements of OI‐135.6 nm nightglow emission and global navigation satellite system (GNSS)‐based total electron content (TEC) maps. The EIA structures in the OI‐135.6 nm emission over the American landmass resemble, spatially and temporally, those observed in the GNSS‐TEC maps. The early morning EIA (EM‐EIA) crests are well separated in latitude and mostly located over the middle of South America during October–November. In February–April the crests are less separated in latitude and predominantly located over ...