EISCAT’s Contributions to High Latitude Ionosphere and Atmosphere Science Within CAWSES in Germany

Abstract

This article presents a very short overview on EISCAT and the German involvement during the past decade, including overview statistics of operating hours, publications etc. In particular we summarize highlights of scientific research using the EISCAT facilities, which have been performed by German research groups as part of the CAWSES Priority Program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft between 2007 and 2011. The purpose of this article is to only extract some highlights, as seen by the authors, since exhaustive descriptions of the complete research results are published elsewhere or in this book. The highlights cover observation of thermosphere density enhancements measured by satellite in the polar cusp region related to ionosphere heating, deduction of electron density profiles by EISCAT in comparison with the AIMOS/HAMMONIA model, Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes (PMSE), their reflectivity and the consequent deduction of microphysical particle parameters, the radar (PMSE) observation of a Kelvin-Helmholtz-Instability as well as discrimination of turbulence effects on PMSE and the detection of the scatter particle line delineating the presence of meteoric smoke in the mesosphere. Beside PMSE also Polar Mesosphere Winter Echoes were detected and interpreted. Two new projects supported by EISCAT measurements have been launched, the effects of the Heating modified ionosphere on Global Navigation Satellite Systems and coupling processes by winds and waves. Finally we briefly introduce the next generation of high latitude radars, namely a view on the planned EISCAT_3D project and its scientific yield expected by potential German users.