Abstract
Abstract. Important observational manifestations of subvisible mesospheric dust are Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes PMSE which are produced by scattering from electron irregularities produced by dust charging. It has been observed that the PMSE strength can be artificially modified by using a ground-based ionospheric heating facility to perturb the electron irregularity source region that is believed to produce PMSE. Recently it has become evident that significant diagnostic information may be available about the dust layer from the temporal behavior of the electron irregularities during the heating process which modifies the background electron temperature. Particularly interesting and important periods of the temporal behavior are during the turn-on and turn-off of the radiowave heating. Although a number of past theoretical and experimental investigations have considered the turn-off period, the objective here is to consider futher possibilities for diagnostic information available as well as the underlying physical processes. Approximate analytical models are developed and compared to a more accurate full computational model as a reference. Then from the temporal behavior of the electron irregularities during the turn-off of the radiowave heating, the analytical models are used to obtain possible diagnostic information for various charged dust and background plasma quantities.
Highlights
Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes PMSEs are strong radar echoes that have been observed typically in the 50 MHz to1.3 GHz frequency range in the summer polar mesosphere (Eklund and Balsley, 1981; Cho et al, 1997)
It should be noted that the larger dust particles of 50 nm size or larger are often observed below the PMSE generation region and make up noctilucent clouds NLCs when observed from the ground and are termed Polar Mesospheric Clouds PMCs when observed from above by spacecraft
It was quickly realized that such modification of PMSE by radiowave heating could be used as a diagnostic for the dust layer parameters
Summary
Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes PMSEs are strong radar echoes that have been observed typically in the 50 MHz to1.3 GHz frequency range in the summer polar mesosphere (Eklund and Balsley, 1981; Cho et al, 1997). Polar Mesospheric Summer Echoes PMSEs are strong radar echoes that have been observed typically in the 50 MHz to. The electron irregularities believed to produce PMSE result from electron charging on subvisible dust that exists in the mesosphere. These particles are in the 10 nm size range and produced from ice since the 85 km altitude range of PMSE generation is the coldest in the atmosphere. It should be noted that the larger dust particles of 50 nm size or larger are often observed below the PMSE generation region and make up noctilucent clouds NLCs when observed from the ground and are termed Polar Mesospheric Clouds PMCs when observed from above by spacecraft
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