Characteristics of the wind, temperature and PMSE field above Davis, Antarctica

Polar mesosphere summer echoes at Wasa, Antarctica (73°S): First observations and comparison with 68°N

“…The distribution among different volume reflectivities, the height variation and the diurnal variation of mean reflectivities and occurrence rates are very similar to the same at the two sites. This contradicts earlier suggestions of large-scale asymmetry between the Arctic and the Antarctic, [Woodman et al, 1999] and confirms and further quantifies the observation by Morris et al [2004Morris et al [ , 2006 that Antarctic PMSE (at 68°S) are similar to Arctic PMSE. Only small differences in mean intensities are found between the sites, with NH PMSE 2 -3 times stronger below 87 km.…”

“…It seems possible that the weak SH PMSE observations could have been due to too low latitude, but it remains unclear whether the problem is related to geographic or to geomagnetic latitude. In 2003, a VHF radar was installed at Davis, Antarctica (68.6°S, geomagnetic latitude 74.4°S) and similar PMSE to those seen in the Arctic were reported [Morris et al, 2004[Morris et al, , 2006. PMSE at HF were also observed from Halley (76°S, 27°W) in early 2004, with qualitatively similar characteristics to NH PMSE at VHF [Jarvis et al, 2005].…”

MF and HF radar techniques for investigating the dynamics and structure of the 50 to 110 km height region: a review

“…It was first applied at VHF to measure wind velocities in the 2-20 km height region in the mid-1970s (Vincent and Röttger 1980). Since the mid-1990s, it has been applied at VHF to mesospheric data using MST radars (e.g., Morris et al 2006) and to boundary layer data using 55 MHz radars (0.3 to 8 km) (e.g., Dolman and Reid 2014), and at ultrahigh frequency (UHF) (Dolman and Reid, private communication, 2015).…”

Influence of tides and gravity waves on layering processes in the polar summer mesopause region

“…Fiedler et al, 2005;Morris et al, 2006), mainly determined by the semidiurnal component as the dominant mode at high latitudes. To investigate the influence of tidal waves on the formation of PMSE and NLC, microphysical model simulations have been carried out where the winds and temperatures have been disturbed by a single idealized wave with a period of 12 h and a vertical wavelength of 25 km, which can be considered as realistic during PMSE observations (e.g.…”

“…1. Signal-to-noise ratio in dB of the backscattered echo power, derived from measurements with the VHF radar at Andenes with the vertically directed beam on 30 July 1997. studied by Barabash et al (1998), Hoffmann et al (1999), and recently by Morris et al (2006).…”