Title
Radio Beacon and Radar Assessment and Forecasting of Equatorial F Region Ionospheric Stability
Date Issued
01 November 2019
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Abstract
Ionospheric conditions on two adjacent nights in March 2019 were observed at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory using a combination of incoherent scatter, coherent scatter, and high-frequency (HF) radio modes. The HF data came from a network of beacons consisting of three transmitters and six receivers operating at two frequencies and deployed regionally. The HF beacons employ pseudorandom noise coding and can be used to measure group delay (pseudorange) and Doppler shift, and the time derivative of optical path length. A method for inferring volumetric estimates of electron density regionally from the HF data is described. The radar and HF data are interpreted in light of a direct numerical simulation of the ionospheric interchange instability to elucidate why convective plumes and equatorial spread F conditions occurred on one night but not the other. The numerical simulation accurately predicted whether convective plumes would develop on a given night, utilizing initial conditions and forcings derived from the incoherent scatter data. The HF data were consistent with the incoherent scatter observations and remained intelligible throughout the equatorial spread F event. Crests in the bottomside electron density associated with convective plumes at higher altitudes could be seen propagating through the region in the HF data. It should be possible to incorporate HF data in assimilative simulations of interchange instabilities in order to predict where and when individual convective plumes emerge.
Start page
9511
End page
9524
Volume
124
Issue
11
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Meteorología y ciencias atmosféricas
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85075435859
Source
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
ISSN of the container
21699380
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by Award FA9550‐12‐1‐0462 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to Cornell University. The Jicamarca Radio Observatory is a facility of the Instituto Geofisíco del Perú operated with support from NSF Award AGS‐1732209 through Cornell. The help of the staff is much appreciated. Data used for this publication are available through the Madrigal database (see http://www.openmadrigal.org .) This work was supported by Award FA9550-12-1-0462 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to Cornell University. The Jicamarca Radio Observatory is a facility of the Instituto Geofis?co del Per? operated with support from NSF Award AGS-1732209 through Cornell. The help of the staff is much appreciated. Data used for this publication are available through the Madrigal database (see http://www.openmadrigal.org.)
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus