D- and E-Region Incoherent-Scatter Radar Observations at Sondrestrom, Greenland

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The Sondrestrom incoherent scatter radar in Greenland has recently been upgraded with a new radar data acquisition system that allows measurements to be made with a higher spatial resolution than ever before. The effort proposed here will take advantage of the improvements to study two interesting and important problems in ionospheric physics. The first is the appearance of thin layers of metallic ions at altitudes near 110 km. These layers have been observed at lower latitudes and have been explained as the concentration of meteoric material due to shears in the neutral winds. At high latitudes this explanation does not apply, so that the appearance of these layers in the Sondrestrom data is an important breakthrough. The second topic of the proposed study is the enhanced ionization at altitudes below 100 km that occurs at high latitudes during large magnetic storms. This ionization is produced by energetic protons from the sun and its presence at such low altitudes can produce dramatic changes in radiowave propagation at high latitudes.