Assessing Doppler velocities of Rankin Inlet F-region echoes

• Main Authors: Koustov, Alexander V, Colville, Kale, Fiori, Robyn A D, Ghezelbash, Mohsen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Research Institute of China - PRIC 2013
• Subjects: Atmosphere; Rankin Inlet; Advances in Polar Science; Polar Science
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/2479/; http://library.arcticportal.org/2479/1/A20130106.pdf

Doppler velocities observed by the Rankin Inlet (RKN) PolarDARN radar are assessed with a focus on data in the beams oriented roughly along the magnetic meridian. Hourly scatter plots for every month are built. They are shown to vary widely, with median values showing very clear magnetic local time variation with maximum magnitude during pre-noon and pre-midnight hours. The histograms contain a significant amount of very small velocity data that dominates at farther ranges and during the daytime. Near noon data show generally antisunward flows but at large ranges/magnetic latitudes and very close to noon, sunward flows occur for periods of positive IMF Bz. The reverse flows are stronger during spring equinox. The velocity magnitude was found to depend linearly on the IMF Bz and interplanetary electric field. Velocities are often found to be smaller than those expected from the statistical convection model of Ruohoniemi and Greenwald –1996.