Volumes and Issues  Contents of Issue 7

Ann. Geophys., 26, 1725-1730, 2008
www.ann-geophys.net/26/1725/2008/
© European Geosciences Union 2008

VHF scintillations, orientation of the anisotropy of F-region irregularities and direction of plasma convection in the polar cap

E. D. Tereshchenko¹, N. Yu. Romanova¹, and A. V. Koustov^2
1Polar Geophysical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 15 Khalturina, 183010 Murmansk, Russia
²Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

Abstract. Scintillation data recorded at the polar cap station Barentsburg are shown to occasionally exhibit two or more peaks in the latitudinal profiles of the amplitude dispersion. Comparison with concurrent SuperDARN radar convection maps indicates that multiple peaks occur when Barentsburg is located within the area of strong changes in the plasma flow direction. When parameters of the ionospheric irregularities are inferred from the scintillation data, the orientation of the irregularity anisotropy in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic field is found to coincide well with the E×B flow direction, individually for each peak of the scintillation data. The differences were found to be mostly less than 20° for a data set comprised of 104 events. The conclusion is made that analysis of scintillation data allows one to infer the direction of plasma flow with a certain degree of detail.

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Citation: Tereshchenko, E. D., Romanova, N. Yu., and Koustov, A. V.: VHF scintillations, orientation of the anisotropy of F-region irregularities and direction of plasma convection in the polar cap, Ann. Geophys., 26, 1725-1730, 2008.   Bibtex   EndNote   Reference Manager