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AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Keywords

  • equatorial electrojet
  • Farley-Buneman waves
  • two-stream instability

Index Terms

  • Ionosphere: Ionospheric irregularities
  • Ionosphere: Equatorial ionosphere
  • Radio Science: Ionospheric physics
  • Radio Science: Remote sensing

Abstract

Radar scatter from equatorial electrojet waves: An explanation for the constancy of the Type I Doppler shift with zenith angle

M. C. Kelley

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

R. A. Cuevas

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

D. L. Hysell

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

The first results from the 430 MHz Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar Prototype (AMISR-P) at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory were reported by Hysell et al. (2007). We present additional data showing that the phase velocity of Type I echoes is independent of zenith angle, an unexplained property of these waves. We interpret the results using rocket data by predicting the total line-of-sight velocity at the four zenith angles used. We find that the radars preferentially detect waves within 10% of C s in at least four range gates for all beams and up to eight range gates for the 51 JULIA beam. This result is consistent with recent auroral observations that Type I waves are only generated with k vectors near the electron flow velocity, where the latter is the vector sum of the zero-order drift and the perturbation drift due to large-scale waves in the equatorial case.

Received 30 November 2007; accepted 25 January 2008; published 26 February 2008.

Citation: Kelley, M. C., R. A. Cuevas, and D. L. Hysell (2008), Radar scatter from equatorial electrojet waves: An explanation for the constancy of the Type I Doppler shift with zenith angle, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L04106, doi:10.1029/2007GL032848.

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