PMSE observations with the EISCAT VHF- and UHF-radars: Ice particles and their effect on ambient electron densities

Abstract

It is now well understood that the occurrence of PMSE is closely connected to the presence of ice particles. These ice particles modify the ambient electron density by electron attachment which occasionally leads to large electron density depletions which have also been called ‘biteouts’. There has been some debate in the literature regarding the relative depth of such depletions which is usually expressed by the parameter Λ=|ZA|NA/ne. Here, |ZA|NA is the charge number density of ice particles and ne is the electron density. In this paper, we present, for the first time, the statistical distribution of Λ using measurements with the EISCAT VHF- and UHF-radars. Based on 25h of simultaneous observations, we derived a total of 757Λ values based on 15min of data each. In each of these cases, PMSE were observed with the EISCAT VHF-radar but not with the UHF-radar and the UHF-measurement were hence used to determine the electron density profile. From these 757 cases, there are 699 cases with Λ⪡1, and only 33 cases with Λ>0.5 (21 cases with Λ>1). A correlation analysis of Λ versus PMSE volume reflectivities further reveals that there is no strong dependence between the two parameters. This is in accordance with current PMSE-theory based on turbulence in combination with a large Schmidt-number. The maxima of Λ from each profile show a negative relationship with the undisturbed electron densities deduced at the same altitudes. This reveals that the variability of Λ mainly depends on the variability of the electron densities. In addition, variations of aerosol number densities may also play a role. Although part of the observations were conducted during the HF heating experiments, the so-called overshoot effects did not significantly bias our statistical results. In order to avoid missing biteouts because of a superposition of coherent and incoherent scatter in the UHF-data, we finally calculated spectral parameters n by applying a simple fit to auto-correlation functions as introduced by Strelnikova and Rapp (2010). Corresponding statistical results of the parameter n indicate that charged ice particles do exist in the vicinity of PMSE (i.e., n<1) but they did not efficiently modify ambient electron densities so that clear ‘biteouts’ are observed.