Electric field measurements in a NLC/PMSE region during the MASS/ECOMA campaign

We present results of electric field measurements made during the MASS rocket campaign in Andøya, Norway into noctilucent clouds (NLC) and polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE) on 3 August 2007. The instrument used high input-impedance preamps to measure vertical and horizontal electric fields. No...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annales Geophysicae
Main Authors: Shimogawa, M., Holzworth, R. H.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-27-1423-2009
https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/27/1423/2009/
Description
Summary:We present results of electric field measurements made during the MASS rocket campaign in Andøya, Norway into noctilucent clouds (NLC) and polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE) on 3 August 2007. The instrument used high input-impedance preamps to measure vertical and horizontal electric fields. No large-amplitude geophysical electric fields were detected in the cloud layers, but significant levels of electric field fluctuations were measured. Within the cloud layer, the probe potentials relative to the rocket skin were driven negative by incident heavy charged aerosols. The amplitude of spikes caused by probe shadowing were also larger in the NLC/PMSE region. We describe a method for calculating positive ion conductivities using these shadowing spike amplitudes and the density of heavy charged aerosols.