Multiple Studies of Wind and Wave Patterns

拟议的研究工作旨在进一步了解地球大气层不同区域之间的相互作用。一个中心推力是研究在稠密的低层大气中产生的大气波与电离层中的等离子体之间的相互作用。这些海浪。在电离层底部形成相当大的结构，许多无线电和通信系统从电离层底部反射信号。由此产生的扭曲是众所周知的，但并不是很好地理解。此外，更精细的尺度结构会导致更高频率的信号“闪烁”，就像大气湍流引起的星光一样。我们希望通过在波多黎各地区开展一场密集的运动，对这些波如何在所有这些尺度上影响中纬度电离层获得新的见解，在那里，国家科学基金会正在聚集一些最先进的仪器。我们将把我们的便携式雷达带到附近的圣克罗伊岛进行宣传，以增加这一工具。除了重力波，我们还对闪电如何影响电离层感兴趣，并计划与米尔斯通山天文台进行一些联合观测，看看是否可以优先探测到短波静电波而不是雷暴。从航天飞机上探测到向上的闪电，电离层效应似乎很有可能。另一个令人感兴趣的话题是极光内部和周围的流场在电离层中引起的湍流。这种湍流可能足够强烈，以至于目前对非相干散射雷达数据的解释是错误的。

The proposed research effort is aimed at the further understanding of the interaction between the various regions of the earth's atmosphere. One central thrust is to study the interaction between atmospheric waves generated in the dense lower atmosphere with the plasma in the ionosphere. These waves. create considerable structure on the bottom of the ionosphere from which many radio and communications systems reflect signals. The resulting distortion is well known but not so well understood. In addition much fine scale structure results which cause even higher frequency signals to "twinkle" much as starlight does due to atmosphere turbulence. We hope to gain new insights into just how these waves affect the mid-latitude ionosphere on all these scales by conducting an intensive campaign in the Puerto Rican sector where the NSF is clustering a number of state-of-the-art instruments. We will add to this instrumentation by taking our portable radar to the nearby island of St. Croix for the campaign. In addition to gravity waves we are interested in how lightning may affect the ionosphere and plan some joint observations with the Millstone Hill Observatory to see if short wavelength electrostatic waves can be detected preferentially over thunderstorms. Upward striking lightning has been detected from the space shuttle and ionosphereic effects seem quite likely. Another topic of interest is the turbulence induced in the ionosphere by the flow fields in and around the aurora. This turbulence may be sufficiently intense that the present interpretation of incoherent scatter radar data is in error.