Comparison between irregularity motion and bulk plasma drifts at high latitudes. Final report, 28 July 1988-29 October 1991

Technical Report · Tue Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1991

OSTI ID:6832790

Livingston, R C; McCready, M C

Coincident measurements of ionospheric motion, derived from two different techniques, are compared. The first technique is coherent-scatter radar measurement of bulk plasma drift; if the plasma flow is uniform within its field of view, the radar provides precise measurements of motion resolved from multiple line-of-sight velocity samples. The second technique is spaced-receiver measurement of kilometer-scale irregularity motion; the velocity is extracted from the diffraction pattern produced by integrated propagation effects along the radio raypath. Detailed comparisons of coincident measurements are made for five experiments in Alaska and Greenland, under a variety of background conditions. When the ionospheric drifts are uniform, the agreement between the two techniques is good. When this is not the case, as is typical near the polar cap boundary, the superior time and spatial resolution of the scintillation technique reveals small-scale flow patterns which are difficult to derive from the radar data.

• Research Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 6832790
• Report Number(s): AD-A-256671/9/XAB; CNN: F19628-88-K-0031
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
IONOSPHERE
PLASMA DRIFT
MEASURING METHODS
ELECTRIC FIELDS
INCOHERENT SCATTERING
RADAR
VELOCITY
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PLANETARY IONOSPHERES
RANGE FINDERS
SCATTERING
661320* - Auroral
Ionospheric
& Magnetospheric Phenomena- (1992-)