No abstract

The Global Positioning System/Meteorology (GPS/MET) mission has been the first experiment to use a low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellite (the MicroLab-1) to receive multi-channel Global Positioning System (GPS) carrier phase signals and demonstrate active limb sounding of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere by radio occultation technique. Under the assumption of spherical symmetry at the locality of the occultation, the dual-band phase data have been processed to yield ray-path bending angle profiles, which have then been used to yield profiles of refractive index via the Abel integral transform. The refractivity profiles can then, in turn, yield profiles of ionospheric electron density and other atmospheric variables such as neutral atmospheric density, pressure, and temperature in the stratosphere and upper troposphere, and water vapor in the lower troposphere with the aid of independent temperature data. To approach a near real-time process, electron density profiles can also be derived by the Abel transform through the computation of total electron content (TEC) assuming straight-line propagation (neglecting bending). In order to assess the accuracy of the GPS/MET ionospheric electron density retrievals, coincidences of ionosonde data with GPS/MET occultations have been examined. The retrieved electron density profiles from GPS/MET TEC observations have been compared with ionogram inversion results derived from digital ionospheric sounders operated by the National Central University (the Chung-Li digisonde; 24.6• N, 121.0 • E) and by Utah State University (the Bear-Lake dynasonde; 41.9• N, 111.4• W). A fuzzy classification method for the automatic identification and scaling of ionogram traces has been applied to recorded ionograms, and then bottomside ionospheric electron density profiles are determined from true-height analysis. The comparison results show better agreement for both of the derived electron density profiles and the F 2 -layer critical frequency ( f o F 2 ) at midlatitude observations than at low-latitude observations. The rms f o F 2 differences from the GPS/MET retrievals are 0.61 MHz to the Bear-Lake dynasonde measurements and 1.62 MHz to the Chung-Li digisonde measurements.

Sun‐aligned arcs are long and sometimes narrow optical structures which are oriented in the sun‐earth direction and which occur in the polar cap, generally during intervals of low magnetic activity. Their appearance, as seen by the DMSP and ISIS‐2 satellite photometers, is examined with respect to the north‐south orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field. In the DMSP pictures it is found that they appear when the IMF is directed northward. In 16 out of 18 unambiguous observations of sun‐aligned arcs by ISIS‐2, the IMF was directed northward; for the other two no IMF data was available. These results provide evidence for a strong correlation between the northward direction of the IMF and the occurrence of sun‐aligned arcs in the northern polar cap.

We consider VHF amplitude scintillations, GPS phase fluctuations, ionosonde measurements, maps of GPS total electron content (TEC), observations of daytime aurora and TIMED GUVI images during the large magnetic storms of October 29–31, 2003, and find two distinct classes of plasma processes that produce midlatitude ionospheric irregularities. One is associated with auroral plasma processes; the other, with storm enhanced density (SED) gradients, a part of which occur in close proximity to sub‐auroral polarization stream (SAPS) electric fields as discussed by J. C. Foster et al. (2002). We analyze in detail the storm event of October 30, 2003. The SAPS‐associated plasma structures may occur by an ion temperature gradient convective instability (M. J. Keskinen et al., 2004), but structuring by auroral processes requires elucidation.

Abstract. On the night of 2 June 2002, the sodium lidar in Fort Collins, CO (40.6 N, 105 W) measured an extremely strong sporadic sodium layer lasting from 03:30 to 05:00 UT with several weaker layers later in the night at 06:00 and 09:00 UT. There is a double layer structure with peaks at 101 and 104 km. The peak sodium density was 21 000 atoms/cm3 with a column abundance of up to twice that of the normal sodium layer. The peak density was 500 times greater than the typical density at that altitude. The sporadic layer abundance and strength factor were higher than any reported in the literature. The two lidar beams, separated by 70 km at this altitude, both measured 0.6 h periodicities in the abundance, but out of phase with each other by 0.3 h. There is also evidence for strong wave activity in the lidar temperatures and winds. The NOAA ionosonde in Boulder, CO (40.0 N, 105 W) measured a critical frequency (foEs) of 14.3 MHz at 03:00 UT on this night, the highest value anytime during 2002. The high values of total ion density inferred means that Na+ fraction must have been only a few percent to explain the neutral Na layer abundances. The Bear Lake, Utah (41.9 N, 111.4 W) dynasonde also measured intense Es between 02:00 and 05:00 UT and again from 06:00 to 08:00 UT about 700 km west of the lidar, with most of the ionograms during these intervals measuring Es up to 12 MHz, the limit of the ionosonde sweep. Other ionosondes around North America on the NGDC database measured normal foEs values that night, so it was a localized event within North America. The peak of Es activity observed in Europe during the summer of 2002 occurred on 4 June. The observations are consistent with the current theories where a combination of wind shears and long period waves form and push downward a concentrated layer of ions, which then chemically react and form a narrow layer of sodium atoms.

Abstract. We present a new procedure for the analysis of ionograms that evolves from methods developed for image analysis and utilizes techniques based on the concepts of fuzzy segmentation and connectedness. Ionogram traces are often not "crisply" defined, and we demonstrate that it is possible to approximate them as fuzzy subsets within the two-dimensional space defined by the time-of-flight and the radio frequency. A real number between 0 and i is assigned to each pixel in an ionogram, thereby defining the membership of that pixel to each of the fuzzy subsets, effectively creating a "gray scale" ionogram. In this context, ionogram analysis becomes a problem in fuzzy geometry, and various geometrical properties, including the topological concepts of connectedness, adjacency, height, width, and major axis, can be defined. It is shown that not only does the fuzzy segmentation process separate signals from the chaotic noise background that often characterizes ionograms, but that it can also be applied to classify ionospheric echoes according to standard nomenclature, e.g., normal E, F, or E8 layers. Furthermore, in reference to the skeleton or thinning extraction procedures employed in imaging processing, the fuzzy connectedness between echoes in selected segments can be used to determine the primary layers that are characteristic of vertical incidence ionospheric reflection. This information can be provided as input to automatic scaling or true-height inversion routines, which can then be used to derive either the standard URSI set of ionospheric parameters or the electron density distribution in the overhead ionosphere, or both. This fuzzy algorithm approach has been successfully applied to midlatitude ionogram data from advanced digital ionospheric sounders operated by the National Central University and Utah State University.

Previous theoretical models showed that, in the middle geomagnetic latitudes the oscillations in the Doppler frequency shift lag and lead the H component of ULF pulsations field on the ground, owing to the advection and compression mechanisms by 90°, respectively. On March 24, 1991, measurements obtained from a CW-HF Doppler sounding system and a fluxgate magnetometer show phase differences of 15°-77° between the Doppler frequency shift oscillations and the Hcomponent of ULF pulsations field at ground level, which indicates that the Doppler velocity arises from predominant changes due to the compression mechanism.

[1] There has been some debate over the years concerning the accuracy of mesospheric wind observations made using the imaging Doppler interferometer (IDI) technique. The high potential and increasing use of IDI wind data in joint studies with spaced-antenna MF and meteor radar systems make it important to quantify the IDI results. This paper presents a novel comparison of wind measurements between a dynasonde implementation of IDI and winds derived from an all-sky meteor radar system, a widely-accepted standard for such measurements. Both radars were located at the USU Bear Lake Observatory and operated almost continuously for a four-month period. The winds and tides derived from IDI were found to closely match those measured by meteor radar, not only during the day but also at night, and at all overlapping heights from 80-95 km.