Upper Atmosphere/Ionosphere Studies with the Middle and Upper (MU) Atmosphere Radar

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

ATM-0001265 Oliver, William This award supports the activities of the PI, a post-doctoral fellow, and a graduate student in continuing the analysis of the ionospheric observations obtained by the MU incoherent scatter radar located in Shigaraki, Japan. This instrument is the only one located in the Asian sector that is capable of observing the weak incoherent scatter originating from free electrons existing in the F-region ionosphere. It is a phase radar which makes possible the simultaneous detection of signals in multiple directions. This unique capability is used to study the propagation of gravity waves within the F-region in terms of statistics of occurrences and directions of propagation. The project research will emphasize four themes: winds, temperatures, waves, and electric fields. Models and new data assimilation algorithms will be developed to represent these measurements for comparison with global circulation models that are developed from first principles. These results form the only long-term, single-station time series of such measurements from the Asian sector and will be a particularly valuable resource. Of particular interest is the new data analysis procedure called the "layer wind" technique that enables the raw data to be analyzed more effectively to extract Doppler shift information with a greater ratio of signal to noise.