A brief history of the development of wind-profiling or MST radars

The history of the development of the wind-profiling or MST radar technique is reviewed from its inception in the late 1960s to the present. Extensions of the technique by the development of boundary-layer radars and the radio-acoustic sounding system (RASS) technique to measure temperature are documented. Applications are described briefly, particularly practical applications to weather forecasting, with data from networks of radars, and scientific applications to the study of rapidly varying atmospheric phenomena such as gravity waves and turbulence.     

Inversion, error analysis, and validation of GPS/MET occultation data

The global positioning system meteorology (GPS/MET) experiment was the first practical demonstration of global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based active limb sounding employing the radio occultation technique. This method measures, as principal observable and with millimetric accuracy, the excess phase path (relative to propagation in vacuum) of GNSS-transmitted radio waves caused by refraction during passage through the Earth’s neutral atmosphere and ionosphere in limb geometry. It shows great potential utility for weather and climate system studies in providing an unique combination of global coverage, high vertical resolution and accuracy, long-term stability, and all-weather capability. We first describe our GPS/MET data processing scheme from excess phases via bending angles to the neutral atmospheric parameters refractivity, density, pressure and temperature. Special emphasis is given to ionospheric correction methodology and the inversion of bending angles to refractivities, where we introduce a matrix inversion technique (instead of the usual integral inversion). The matrix technique is shown to lead to identical results as integral inversion but is more directly extendable to inversion by optimal estimation. The quality of GPS/MET-derived profiles is analyzed with an error estimation analysis employing a Monte Carlo technique. We consider statistical errors together with systematic errors due to upper-boundary initialization of the retrieval by a priori bending angles. Perfect initialization and properly smoothed statistical errors allow for better than 1 K temperature retrieval accuracy up to the stratopause. No initialization and statistical errors yield better than 1 K accuracy up to 30 km but less than 3 K accuracy above 40 km. Given imperfect initialization, biases ≫ 2 K propagate down to below 30 km height in unfavorable realistic cases. Furthermore, results of a statistical validation of GPS/MET profiles through comparison with atmospheric analyses of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are presented. The comparisons indicate the high utility of the occultation data in that very good agreement of upper troposphere/lower stratosphere temperature (better than 1.5 K rms, ≪ 0.5 K bias) is found for a region (Europe+USA) where the ECMWF analyses are known to be good, but poorer agreement for a region (Southern Pacific) where the analyses are known to be degraded.     

Space Plasma Exploration by Active Radar (SPEAR): an overview of a future radar facility

SPEAR is a new polar cap HF radar facility which is to be deployed on Svalbard. The principal capabilities of SPEAR will include the generation of artificial plasma irregularities, operation as an all-sky HF radar, the excitation of ULF waves, and remote sounding of the magnetosphere. Operation of SPEAR in conjunction with the multitude of other instruments on Svalbard, including the EISCAT Svalbard radar, and the overlap of its extensive field-of-view with that of several of the HF radars in the SuperDARN network, will enable in-depth diagnosis of many geophysical and plasma phenomena associated with the cusp region and the substorm expansion phase. Moreover, its ability to produce artificial radar aurora will provide a means for the other instruments to undertake polar cap plasma physics experiments in a controlled manner. Another potential use of the facility is in field-line tagging experiments, for coordinated ground-satellite experiments. Here the scientific objectives of SPEAR are detailed, along with the proposed technical specifications of the system.     

Ground clutter cancellation in incoherent radars: solutions for EISCAT Svalbard radar

Incoherent scatter radars measure ionosphere parameters using modified Thomson scatter from free electrons in the target (see e.g. Hagfors, 1997). The integrated cross section of the ionospheric scatterers is extremely small and the measurements can easily be disturbed by signals returned by unwanted targets. Ground clutter signals, entering via the antenna side lobes, can render measurements at the nearest target ranges totally impossible. The EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR), which started measurements in 1996, suffers from severe ground clutter and the ionosphere cannot be measured in any simple manner at ranges less than about 120–150 km, depending on the modulation employed. If the target and clutter signals have different, and clearly identifiable, properties then, in principle, there are always ways to eliminate the clutter. In incoherent scatter measurements, differences in the coherence times of the wanted and unwanted signals can be used for clutter cancellation. The clutter cancellation must be applied to all modulations, usually alternating codes in modern experiments, used for shorter ranges. Excellent results have been obtained at the ESR using a simple pulse-to-pulse clutter subtraction method, but there are also other possibilities.     

Analysis of hot springs and associated deposits in Yellowstone National Park using ASTER and AVIRIS remote sensing

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and the Airborne Visible/IR Image Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data were used to characterize hot spring deposits in the Lower, Midway, and Upper Geyser Basins of Yellowstone National Park from the visible/near infrared (VNIR) to thermal infrared (TIR) wavelengths. Field observations of these basins provided the critical ground-truth for comparison with the remote sensing results. Fourteen study sites were selected based on diversity in size, deposit type, and thermal activity. Field work included detailed site surveys such as land cover analysis, photography, Global Positioning System (GPS) data collection, radiometric analysis, and VNIR spectroscopy. Samples of hot spring deposits, geyser deposits, and soil were also collected. Analysis of ASTER data provided broad scale characteristics of the hot springs and their deposits, including the identification of thermal anomalies. AVIRIS high spectral resolution short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectroscopy provided the ability to detect hydrothermally altered minerals as well as a calibration for the multispectral SWIR ASTER data. From the image analysis, differences in these basins were identified including the extent of thermal alteration, the location and abundance of alteration minerals, and a comparison of active, near-extinct, and extinct geysers. We determined the activity level of each region using a combination of the VNIR-SWIR-TIR spectral differences as well as the presence of elevated temperatures, detected by the TIR subsystem of ASTER. The results of this study are applicable to the exploration of extinct mineralized hydrothermal deposits on both Earth and Mars.     

Acoustic tomography in the atmospheric surface layer

Acoustic tomography is presented as a technique for remote monitoring of meteorological quantities. This method and a special algorithm of analysis can directly produce area-averaged values of meteorological parameters. As a result consistent data will be obtained for validation of numerical atmospheric micro-scale models. Such a measuring system can complement conventional point measurements over different surfaces. The procedure of acoustic tomography uses the horizontal propagation of sound waves in the atmospheric surface layer. Therefore, to provide a general overview of sound propagation under various atmospheric conditions a two-dimensional ray-tracing model according to a modified version of Snell’s law is used. The state of the crossed atmosphere can be estimated from measurements of acoustic travel time between sources and receivers at different points. Derivation of area-averaged values of the sound speed and furthermore of air temperature results from the inversion of travel time values for all acoustic paths. Thereby, the applied straight ray two-dimensional tomographic model using SIRT (simultaneous iterative reconstruction technique) is characterised as a method with small computational requirements, satisfactory convergence and stability properties as well as simple handling, especially, during online evaluation.     

New techniques for auroral irregularity studies with COSCAT

The COSCAT system enables the detection of E-region auroral backscatter with the EISCAT remote receivers at magnetic aspect angles close to 90°. This is achieved by utilising a low-power transmitter stationed in Oulu, Finland. Many important observations of E-region irregularities have been achieved with this simple experiment. Recent studies have attempted to push the COSCAT system to its experimental limits. Firstly, the CW signal has been phase-modulated with 13-bit Barker codes with baud lengths of 40, 70 and 100 s. Interpretation of the received power allows the spatial distribution of the auroral scatterers to be determined. The second advance is in the use of a sophisticated correlator program which allows data to be buffered within the correlator at very high time resolution. This enables the coherent backscatter power to be sampled every 12.5 ms and the full auto-correlation function to be measured every 100 ms. These measurements allow the COSCAT system to be employed for the first time in an investigation of the growth and decay of the auroral irregularities.     

Imaging of structures in the high-latitude ionosphere: model comparisons

The tomographic reconstruction technique generates a two-dimensional latitude versus height electron density distribution from sets of slant total electron content measurements (TEC) along ray paths between beacon satellites and ground-based radio receivers. In this note, the technique is applied to TEC values obtained from data simulated by the Sheffield/UCL/SEL Coupled Thermosphere/Ionosphere/Model (CTIM). A comparison of the resulting reconstructed image with the input modelled data allows for verification of the reconstruction technique. All the features of the high-latitude ionosphere in the model data are reproduced well in the tomographic image. Reconstructed vertical TEC values follow closely the modelled values, with the F-layer maximum density (NmF2) agreeing generally within about 10%. The method has also been able successfully to reproduce underlying auroral-E ionisation over a restricted latitudinal range in part of the image. The height of the F2 peak is generally in agreement to within about the vertical image resolution (25 km).     

Analysis of thick, non-planar boundaries using the discontinuity analyser

The advent of missions comprised of phased arrays of spacecraft, with separation distances ranging down to at least mesoscales, provides the scientific community with an opportunity to accurately analyse the spatial and temporal dependencies of structures in space plasmas. Exploitation of the multi-point data sets, giving vastly more information than in previous missions, thereby allows unique study of their small-scale physics. It remains an outstanding problem, however, to understand in what way comparative information across spacecraft is best built into any analysis of the combined data. Different investigations appear to demand different methods of data co-ordination. Of the various multi-spacecraft data analysis techniques developed to affect this exploitation, the discontinuity analyser has been designed to investigate the macroscopic properties (topology and motion) of boundaries, revealed by multi-spacecraft magnetometer data, where the possibility of at least mesoscale structure is considered. It has been found that the analysis of planar structures is more straightforward than the analysis of non-planar boundaries, where the effects of topology and motion become interwoven in the data, and we argue here that it becomes necessary to customise the analysis for non-planar events to the type of structure at hand. One issue central to the discontinuity analyser, for instance, is the calculation of normal vectors to the structure. In the case of planar and ‘thin’ non-planar structures, the method of normal determination is well-defined, although subject to uncertainties arising from unwanted signatures. In the case of ‘thick’, non-planar structures, however, the method of determination becomes particularly sensitive to the type of physical sampling that is present. It is the purpose of this article to firstly review the discontinuity analyser technique and secondly, to discuss the analysis of the normals to thick non-planar structures detected in magnetometer data.     

The magnetic field experiment onboard Equator-S and its scientific possibilities

The special feature of the ringcore fluxgate magnetometer on Equator-S is the high time and field resolution. The scientific aim of the experiment is the investigation of waves in the 10–100 picotesla range with a time resolution up to 64 Hz. The instrument characteristics and the influence of the spacecraft on the magnetic field measurement will be discussed. The work shows that the applied pre- and inflight calibration techniques are sufficient to suppress spacecraft interferences. The offset in spin axis direction was determined for the first time with an independent field measurement by the Equator-S Electron Drift Instrument. The data presented gives an impression of the accuracy of the measurement.     

Geomagnetic control of polar mesosphere summer echoes

Using observations with the ALOMAR SOUSY radar near Andenes (69.3°N, 16.0°E) from 1994 until 1997 polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSE) have been investigated in dependence on geomagnetic K indices derived at the Auroral Observatory Tromsø (69.66°N, 18.94°E). During night-time and morning hours a significant correlation between the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the radar results and the geomagnetic K indices could be detected with a maximum correlation near midnight. The correlation becomes markedly smaller in the afternoon and early evening hours with a minimum near 17 UT. This diurnal variation is in reasonable agreement with riometer absorption at Ivalo (68.55°N, 27.28°E) and can be explained by the diurnal variation of ionization due to precipitating high energetic particles. Therefore, a part of the diurnal PMSE variation is caused by this particle precipitation. The variability of the solar EUV variation, however, has no significant influence on the PMSE during the observation period.     

MIDAS-W: a workstation-based incoherent scatter radar data acquisition system

The Millstone Hill Incoherent Scatter Data Acquisition System (MIDAS) is based on an abstract model of an incoherent scatter radar. This model is implemented in a hierarchical software system, which serves to isolate hardware and low-level software implementation details from higher levels of the system. Inherent in this is the idea that implementation details can easily be changed in response to technological advances. MIDAS is an evolutionary system, and the MIDAS hardware has, in fact, evolved while the basic software model has remained unchanged. From the earliest days of MIDAS, it was realized that some functions implemented in specialized hardware might eventually be implemented by software in a general-purpose computer. MIDAS-W is the realization of this concept. The core component of MIDAS-W is a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc 10 workstation equipped with an Ultrarad 1280 PCI bus analog to digital (A/D) converter board. In the current implementation, a 2.25 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) is bandpass sampled at 1 s intervals and these samples are multicast over a high-speed Ethernet which serves as a raw data bus. A second workstation receives the samples, converts them to filtered, decimated, complex baseband samples and computes the lag-profile matrix of the decimated samples. Overall performance is approximately ten times better than the previous MIDAS system, which utilizes a custom digital filtering module and array processor based correlator. A major advantage of MIDAS-W is its flexibility. A portable, single-workstation data acquisition system can be implemented by moving the software receiver and correlator programs to the workstation with the A/D converter. When the data samples are multicast, additional data processing systems, for example for raw data recording, can be implemented simply by adding another workstation with suitable software to the high-speed network. Testing of new data processing software is also greatly simplified, because a workstation with the new software can be added to the network without impacting the production system. MIDAS-W has been operated in parallel with the existing MIDAS-1 system to verify that incoherent scatter measurements by the two systems agree. MIDAS-W has also been used in a high-bandwidth mode to collect data on the November, 1999, Leonid meteor shower.     

应用地基GPS遥感倾斜路径方向大气水汽总量

应用地基GPS沿倾斜路径方向遥测大气水汽总量,是获得测站周围水汽三维空间分布信息(水汽层析)的基础.本文介绍了地基GPS沿倾斜路径方向遥感大气水汽总量的原理和方法;首先用湿梯度、后处理残差联合计算接收机上空不同方位上大气水汽各向异性成分,在此基础上重构倾斜路径水汽总量.为验证GPS观测结果精度,用微波辐射计（WVR）与GPS一起进行了联合观测,不同观测地点和时间的对比结果表明,二者root-mean-square (RMS)误差小于4mm,证明应用此种方法地基GPS可较精确地反演出倾斜路径方向大气水汽总量,而且这种反演方法适合于近实时大气遥感探测.地基GPS测量具有全天候可连续观测等优点,可以弥补常规观测的不足,为气候研究提供高精度且连续的水汽数据资料;组网观测可以为数值天气预报提供好的初始场,提高模式预报精度.     

Probing discrete auroral arcs by ionospheric tomography

Optical observations of 557.7 nm and 630.0 nm emissions from discrete auroral arcs in the post-noon sector have been related to localised field-aligned enhancements in the spatial distribution of E- and F-layer electron density respectively seen in images reconstructed by ionospheric tomography. Results from two case studies are presented in which meridian scanning photometer and all-sky camera observations on Svalbard have been compared to electron-density structures found by tomographic inversion of measurements made by reception of radio signals at a chain of four stations at high latitude. The F-layer features are long-lived and show exact correspondence to the red-line emissions. Transient arcs in green-line intensity result in E-region structures that are resolved in one case, but not in another where the dynamic auroral forms are separated by less than one degree of latitude. The signature of an inverted-V precipitation event is clearly evident in one example.     

Plasma density over Svalbard during the ISBJØRN campaign

In 1997, reliable operation of the EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR) was achieved and a rocket launching facility at Ny Ålesund on Svalbard (79°N, 12°E) (SVALRAK) was established. On 20 November, 1977, the first instrumented payload was launched from SVALRAK. Although the payload configuration had been flown many times previously from Andøya Rocket Range on the Norwegian mainland, this presented an unprecedented in situ determination of positive ion density over Svalbard. Simultaneously, ESR measured similar density profiles but in a higher altitude regime. We have combined the ESR measurements with ionosonde data to establish a calibration and subsequently combined the ground-based and in situ determined profiles to give a composite positive ion density profile from the mesosphere to the thermosphere.     

A comparison between mesospheric wind measurements made near Christchurch (44°S, 173°E) using the high resolution doppler imager (HRDI) and a medium frequency (MF) radar

We report on the comparison of winds measured by a medium frequency (MF) radar near Christchurch, New Zealand, and by the high resolution doppler imager (HRDI). Previous comparisons have demonstrated that there can be significant differences in the winds obtained by the two techniques, and our results are no different. However, these data show relatively good agreement in the meridional direction, but large differences in the zonal direction, where the radar is regularly measuring the zonal wind as too easterly. To do the comparison, overpasses from the satellite must be obtained when it is close to the radar site. The radar data are averaged in time around the overpass because we know the radars sample phenomena which have spatial and temporal scales which make them invisible to HRDI. There are a limited number of overpass comparisons which limit our confidence in these results, but a detailed analysis of these data show that the proximity of the overpass is often an important factor in the differences obtained. Other factors examined include the influence of the local time of the overpass, and the amount of radar data averaged around the overpass time.     

Observations of thermospheric neutral winds within the polar cusp and the auroral oval using a Doppler imaging system (DIS)

Two Doppler imaging systems (DIS) or wide-field imaging Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPI), have recently been commissioned, one at the Auroral Station, Adventdalen, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, and the second at the IRF, Kiruna, Sweden. These instruments can provide wide-field (600 * 800 km) images of neutral wind flows in the upper thermosphere, by measuring the Doppler shift of the atomic oxygen forbidden near 630 nm, which is emitted from an altitude of approximately 240 km. From the instrument in Svalbard, at mid-winter, it is possible to observe the dayside polar cusp and the polar cap throughout the entire day, whereas from Kiruna, the night-time auroral oval is observable during the hours of darkness. Measurements of thermospheric dynamics from the DIS can be used in conjunction with observations of ionospheric plasma flows and thermal plasma densities by the EISCAT-Svalbard radar (ESR) and by EISCAT, along with other complementary observations by co-located instruments such as the auroral large-scale imaging system (ALIS). Such combined data sets will allow a wide range of scientific studies to be performed concerning the dynamical response of the thermosphere and ionosphere, and the important energetic and momentum exchange processes resulting from their complex interactions. These processes are particularly important in the immediate vicinity of the polar cusp and within the auroral oval. Early results from Svalbard in late 1995 will be discussed. The DIS in Kiruna observed two interesting geomagnetic disturbances in early 1997, the minor geomagnetic storm of 10, 11 January, and the disturbed period from 7–10 February. During these events, the thermospheric wind response showed some interesting departures from the average behaviour, which we attribute to the result of strong and variable Lorenz forcing (ion drag) and Joule and particle heating during these geomagnetic disturbances.     

Extrapolating EISCAT Pedersen conductances to other parts of the sky using ground-based TV auroral images

Ionospheric conductivity is not very easily measured directly. Incoherent scatter radars perhaps offer the best method but can only measure at one point in the sky at any one time and are limited in their time resolution. Statistical models of average conductivity are available but these may not be applied to individual case studies such as substorms. There are many instances where a real-time estimate of ionospheric conductivity over a large field-of-view is highly desirable at a high temporal and spatial resolution. We show that it is possible to make a reasonable estimate of the noctural height-integrated Pedersen conductivity, or conductance, with a single all-sky TV camera operating at 557.7 nm. This is not so in the case of the Hall conductance where at least two auroral wavelengths should be imaged in order to estimate additionally the energy of the precipitating particles.     

First complementary observations by ionospheric tomography, the EISCAT Svalbard radar and the CUTLASS HF radar

Experimental results are presented from ionospheric tomography, the EISCAT Svalbard radar and the CUTLASS HF radar. Tomographic measurements on 10 October 1996, showing a narrow, field-aligned enhancement in electron density in the post-noon sector of the dayside auroral zone, are related to a temporal increase in the plasma concentration observed by the incoherent scatter radar in the region where the HF radar indicated a low velocity sunwards convection. The results demonstrate the complementary nature of these three instruments for polar-cap ionospheric studies.     

Letter to the editor A comparison of F-region ion velocity observations from the EISCAT Svalbard and VHF radars with irregularity drift velocity measurements from the CUTLASS Finland HF radar

During August 1998, the UK EISCAT special programme SP-UK-CSUB, which combines operation of both the mainland VHF and Svalbard UHF incoherent scatter radars, was run for several hours around magnetic midnight on four consecutive days. The CUTLASS Finland HF coherent scatter radar was, at these times, operating in a discretionary mode, sounding on all 16 beams, one at high-time resolution. This study presents a comparison of the velocities measured by coherent and incoherent techniques during the SP-UK-CSUB experiments. Agreement, particularly between the ion velocities measured by the EISCAT Svalbard radar and irregularity drift measurements by the Finland radar, is remarkable, thereby validating the scientific integrity of both data sets. This work highlights the substantive contribution to our understanding of the solar-terrestrial environment which can be made by use in concert of incoherent and HF coherent scatter radars.