Daytime and Nighttime Neutral Wind and Temperature Measurements from Incoherent Scatter Radar at 300 Km over Arecibo

摘要

Arecibo's twenty acre spherical radar reflector detects the weak electromagnetic energy reflected when pulses are transmitted into the ionosphere. The information contained in this reflected energy reveals the electron temperature, the electron/ion temperature ratio, the line of sight plasma velocity and the electron density among other parameters. This information, combined with neutral densities obtained from the global thermospheric model based on mass spectrometer and incoherent scatter data, MSIS-83, is used to determine the neutral temperature and winds in the F region. This study pertains to the F2 region at a height of 300km over Arecibo (18 N latitude with a magnetic dip angle of 50). A few trends in previous data are noted followed a description of the 300km temperature and neutral wind for daytime and nighttime from 12 days of data, sets of three days from January 1984 and 1985, September 1984, and June, 1984. The experimental neutral temperature is compared to the MSIS model prediction. The observed temperature closely agrees in phase, but averages 50K lower than the model.