Medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances observed with the SuperDARN Hokkaido radar, all‐sky imager, and GPS network and their relation to concurrent sporadic E irregularities

Abstract

We present midlatitude medium‐scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) observed with a Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) HF radar at around 10 MHz in Hokkaido, Japan, in combination with a 630‐nm all‐sky imager and a GPS network (GEONET) that provides total electron content (TEC) data. MSTIDs propagating southward from high latitudes are detected at first with the HF radar and then with the imager and GEONET. We analyze two MSTID events, one in winter (event 1) and the other in summer (event 2), to find that MSTIDs appear simultaneously, at least, at 55°–25°N. It is shown that nighttime MSTIDs propagate toward the southwest over a horizontal distance of about 4000 km, and daytime MSTIDs do so toward the southeast. Daytime radar echoes are due to ground/sea surface (GS) scatter, while nighttime echoes in event 1 return from 15‐m‐scale F region field‐aligned irregularities (FAIs) and those in event 2 are due to GS scatter. Doppler velocities of the nighttime F region FAI echoes in event 1 are negative (motion away from the radar) within strong echo regions and are positive (motion toward the radar) within weak echo regions. This fact suggests that the strong (weak) echoes return from suppressed (enhanced) airglow/TEC areas, in line with previous observations over central Japan. The nighttime MSTIDs in events 1 and 2 are often accompanied by concurrent coherent echoes from FAIs in sporadic E (Es) layers. The Es echo areas in event 2 rather coincide with suppressed airglow/TEC areas in the F region that are connected with the echo areas along the geomagnetic field, indicating the existence of E and F region coupling at night.