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E region radar echoes from low‐latitude field‐aligned irregularities due to gravity waves and tides: A case study using radar, lidar, and radiosonde observations and simulations
Author(s) -
Sridharan S.,
Sandhya M.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1002/2013ja019273
Subject(s) - geology , radiosonde , gravity wave , atmospheric sciences , amplitude , mesosphere , stratosphere , altitude (triangle) , geodesy , geophysics , physics , gravitational wave , geometry , astrophysics , mathematics , quantum mechanics
On the night of 5 February 2011, the height‐time plot of echo from E region field‐aligned irregularities (FAI) received by the Indian mesosphere‐stratosphere‐troposphere radar at Gadanki (13.5°N, 79.2°E) shows a slow‐descending layered structures separated by nearly 8 km in the height region 80–100 km and vertically elongated structures with quasiperiodic variations at higher heights. The stratospheric thermal structure also shows similar slowly descending structures with nearly 8 km separation. Hodograph of 7–9 km band‐pass filtered radiosonde zonal and meridional winds over Gadanki form clearly an ellipse, and the dominant period obtained from the ratio of major to minor axes of the ellipse is nearly 24 h indicating the presence of a nonmigrating diurnal tide with vertical wavelength of 8 km. The two‐dimensional spectrum of temperature perturbations, which are assumed to be due to gravity waves, shows dominant periods near 1 h and 1.5 h. The spectrum of FAI echo also shows similar dominant periods. Altitude‐time cross section of vertical ion velocity is computed using winds composed of observed gravity wave and tidal parameters. As the diurnal tide over Tirunelveli (8.7°N, 77.8°E) shows weaker amplitudes above 90 km, the removal of tidal contribution clearly reveals the observed FAI echo structure of vertically slanting plasma blob structures at higher heights and slowly descending continuous structures separated by 8 km at lower heights. The present study clearly demonstrates the role of tides and gravity waves in the formation of descending echo structures and quasiperiodic echoes respectively.