The EISCAT (European incoherent scatter) Svalbard radar (ESR) was officially inaugurated on August 22, 1996. This event marked the successful completion on schedule of the first phase of the EISCAT Svalbard radar project. In contrast to previous incoherent scatter radars, the ESR system design was adapted to make use of commercial off‐the‐shelf TV transmitter hardware, thereby reducing design risk, lead times, and cost to a minimum. Commercial hardware is also used in the digital signal processing system. Control and monitoring are performed by distributed, networked VME systems. Thanks to modern reflector antenna design methods and extreme efforts to reduce the receiver noise contribution, the system noise temperature is only 70 K, thus making the ESR about 30% faster than the much more powerful EISCAT UHF radar in F region experiments! Once the transmitter power is increased to 1 MW, it will become about 2–3 times faster than the UHF radar. State‐of‐the‐art exciter and receiver hardware has been developed in‐house to accommodate the special requirements introduced by operating the radar at the exceptionally high duty cycle of 25%. The RF waveform is generated by a system based on four switchable direct digital synthesizers. Continuous monitoring of the transmitted RF waveform by the receiver system allows removal of klystron‐induced spurious Doppler effects from the data. Intermediate‐frequency sampling at 7.5 MHz is employed, followed by fully digital channel separation, signal detection, and postdetection filtering in six parallel receiver channels. Radar codes for both E and F layer observation have been designed and perfected. So far, more than 40 hours of good quality ionospheric data have been collected and analyzed in terms of plasma parameters. While the tragic loss of the Cluster mission suddenly changed the plans and dispositions of a majority of the ESR user community, the radar has still been in high demand since its inauguration. It is now being operated by EISCAT staff on a campaign basis, to provide ground‐based support data for a number of other magnetospheric satellites, notably Polar and FAST, and will be opened to the EISCAT user community for special program operations later in 1997.
[1] Polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSE)
The relationship between polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSE) and geomagnetic disturbances (represented by magnetic <I>K</I> indices) is examined. Calibrated PMSE reflectivities for the period May 2006–February 2012 are used from two 52.0/54.5 MHz radars located in Arctic Sweden (68° N, geomagnetic latitude 65°) and at two different sites in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica (73°/72° S, geomagnetic latitudes 62°/63°). In both the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and the Southern Hemisphere (SH) there is a strong increase in mean PMSE reflectivity between quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions. Mean volume reflectivities are slightly lower at the SH locations compared to the NH, but the position of the peak in the lognormal distribution of PMSE reflectivities is close to the same at both NH and SH locations, and varies only slightly with magnetic disturbance level. Differences between the sites, and between geomagnetic disturbance levels, are primarily due to differences in the high-reflectivity tail of the distribution. PMSE occurrence rates are essentially the same at both NH and SH locations during most of the PMSE season when a sufficiently low detection threshold is used so that the peak in the lognormal distribution is included. When the local-time dependence of the PMSE response to geomagnetic disturbance level is considered, the response in the NH is found to be immediate at most local times, but delayed by several hours in the afternoon sector and absent in the early evening. At the SH sites, at lower magnetic latitude, there is a delayed response (by several hours) at almost all local times. At the NH (auroral zone) site, the dependence on magnetic disturbance is highest during evening-to-morning hours. At the SH (sub-auroral) sites the response to magnetic disturbance is weaker but persists throughout the day. While the immediate response to magnetic activity can be qualitatively explained by changes in electron density resulting from energetic particle precipitation, the delayed response can largely be explained by changes in nitric oxide concentrations. Observations of nitric oxide concentration at PMSE heights by the Odin satellite support this hypothesis. Sensitivity to geomagnetic disturbances, including nitric oxide produced during these disturbances, can explain previously reported differences between sites in the auroral zone and those at higher or lower magnetic latitudes. The several-day lifetime of nitric oxide can also explain earlier reported discrepancies between high correlations for average conditions (year-by-year PMSE reflectivities and <I>K</I> indices) and low correlations for minute-to-day timescales
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Abstract. Comprehensive analysis of the wave activity in the Antarctic summer mesopause is performed using polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE) measurements for December 2010-January 2011. The 2-day planetary wave is a statistically significant periodic oscillation in the power spectrum density of PMSE power. The strongest periodic oscillation in the power spectrum belongs to the diurnal solar tide; the semi-diurnal solar tide is found to be a highly significant harmonic oscillation as well. The inertial-gravity waves are extensively studied by means of PMSE power and wind components. The strongest gravity waves are observed at periods of about 1, 1.4, 2.5 and 4 h, with characteristic horizontal wavelengths of 28, 36, 157 and 252 km, respectively. The gravity waves propagate approximately in the west-east direction over Wasa (Antarctica). A detailed comparison between theoretical and experimental volume reflectivity of PMSE, measured at Wasa, is made. It is demonstrated that a new expression for PMSE reflectivity derived by Varney et al. (2011) is able to adequately describe PMSE profiles both in the magnitude and in height variations. The best agreement, within 30 %, is achieved when mean values of neutral atmospheric parameters are utilized. The largest contribution to the formation and variability of the PMSE layer is explained by the ice number density and its height gradient, followed by waveinduced perturbations in buoyancy period and the turbulent energy dissipation rate.
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