221 research outputs found
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Mesospheric semidiurnal tides and near-12âh waves through jointly analyzing observations of five specular meteor radars from three longitudinal sectors at boreal midlatitudes
In the last decades, mesospheric tides have been intensively investigated with observations from both ground-based radars and satellites. Single-site radar observations provide continuous measurements at fixed locations without horizontal information, whereas single-spacecraft missions typically provide global coverage with limited temporal coverage at a given location. In this work, by combining 8 years (2009-2016) of mesospheric winds collected by five specular meteor radars from three different longitudinal sectors at boreal midlatitudes (49±8.5ÄâN), we develop an approach to investigate the most intense global-scale oscillation, namely at the period TCombining double low line12±0.5âh. Six waves are resolved: The semidiurnal westward-Traveling tidal modes with zonal wave numbers 1, 2, and 3 (SW1, SW2, SW3), the lunar semidiurnal tide M2, and the upper and lower sidebands (USB and LSB) of the 16âd wave nonlinear modulation on SW2. The temporal variations of the waves are studied statistically with a special focus on their responses to sudden stratospheric warming events (SSWs) and on their climatological seasonal variations. In response to SSWs, USB, LSB, and M2 enhance, while SW2 decreases. However, SW1 and SW3 do not respond noticeably to SSWs, contrary to the broadly reported enhancements in the literature. The USB, LSB, and SW2 responses could be explained in terms of energy exchange through the nonlinear modulation, while LSB and USB might previously have been misinterpreted as SW1 and SW3, respectively. Besides, we find that LSB and M2 enhancements depend on the SSW classification with respect to the associated split or displacement of the polar vortex. In the case of seasonal variations, our results are qualitatively consistent with previous studies and show a moderate correlation with an empirical tidal model derived from satellite observations. © Author(s) 2019
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Can VHF radars at polar latitudes measure mean vertical winds in the presence of PMSE?
Mean vertical velocity measurements obtained from radars at polar latitudes using polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSEs) as an inert tracer have been considered to be non-representative of the mean vertical winds over the last couple of decades. We used PMSEs observed with the Middle Atmosphere Alomar Radar System (MAARSY) over AndĂžya, Norway (69.30°N, 16.04°E), during summers of 2016 and 2017 to derive mean vertical winds in the upper mesosphere. The 3-D vector wind components (zonal, meridional and vertical) are based on a Doppler beam swinging experiment using five beam directions (one vertical and four oblique). The 3-D wind components are computed using a recently developed wind retrieval technique. The method includes full non-linear error propagation, spatial and temporal regularisation, and beam pointing corrections and angular pointing uncertainties. Measurement uncertainties are used as weights to obtain seasonal weighted averages and characterise seasonal mean vertical velocities. Weighted average values of vertical velocities reveal a weak upward behaviour at altitudes ⌠84-87 km after eliminating the influence of the speed of falling ice. At the same time, a sharp decrease (increase) in the mean vertical velocities at the lower (upper) edges of the summer mean altitude profile, which are attributed to the sampling issues of the PMSE due to disappearance of the target corresponding to the certain regions of motions and temperatures, prevails. Thus the mean vertical velocities can be biased downwards at the lower edge, and the mean vertical velocities can be biased upwards at the upper edge, while at the main central region the obtained mean vertical velocities are consistent with expected upward values of mean vertical winds after considering ice particle sedimentation. © 2019 Author(s). This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
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Geometric considerations of polar mesospheric summer echoes in tilted beams using coherent radar imaging
We present observations of polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE) using the Middle Atmosphere Alomar Radar System in Northern Norway (69.30° N, 16.04° E). The radar is able to resolve PMSE at high spatial and temporal resolution and to perform pulse-to-pulse beam steering. In this experiment, 81 oblique beam directions were used with off-zenith angles up to 25°. For each beam pointing direction and range gate, coherent radar imaging was applied to determine the mean backscatter location. The location of the mean scatterer in the beam volume was calculated by the deviation from the nominal off-zenith angle of the brightest pixel. It shows that in tilted beams with an off-zenith angle greater than 5°, structures appear at the altitudinal edges of the PMSE layer. Our results indicate that the mean influence of the location of the maximum depends on the tilt of the beam and on the observed area of the PMSE layer. At the upper/lower edge of the PMSE layer, the mean backscatter has a greater/smaller off-zenith angle than the nominal off-zenith angle. This effect intensifies with greater off-zenith beam pointing direction, so the beam filling factor plays an important role in the observation of PMSE layers for oblique beams
Enhancing the spatiotemporal features of polar mesosphere summer echoes using coherent MIMO and radar imaging at MAARSY
Polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSEs) are very strong radar echoes caused by the presence of ice particles, turbulence, and free electrons in the mesosphere over polar regions. For more than three decades, PMSEs have been used as natural tracers of the complicated atmospheric dynamics of this region. Neutral winds and turbulence parameters have been obtained assuming PMSE horizontal homogeneity on scales of tens of kilometers. Recent radar imaging studies have shown that PMSEs are not homogeneous on these scales and instead they are composed of kilometer-scale structures. In this paper, we present a technique that allows PMSE observations with unprecedented angular resolution (âŒ0.6). The technique combines the concept of coherent MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) and two high-resolution imaging techniques, i.e., Capon and maximum entropy (MaxEnt). The resulting resolution is evaluated by imaging specular meteor echoes. The gain in angular resolution compared to previous approaches using SIMO (Single Input Multiple Output) and Capon is at least a factor of 2; i.e., at 85 km, we obtain a horizontal resolution of âŒ900 m. The advantage of the new technique is evaluated with two events of 3-D PMSE structures showing: (1) horizontal wavelengths of 8-10 km and periods of 4-7 min, drifting with the background wind, and (2) horizontal wavelengths of 12-16 km and periods of 15-20 min, not drifting with the background wind. Besides the advantages of the implemented technique, we discuss its current challenges, like the use of reduced power aperture and processing time, as well as the future opportunities for improving the understanding of the complex small-scale atmospheric dynamics behind PMSEs. © 2019 Author(s)
An imaging interferometry capability for the EISCAT Svalbard Radar.
Interferometric imaging (aperture synthesis imaging)
is a technique used by radio astronomers to achieve
angular resolution that far surpasses what is possible with a
single large aperture. A similar technique has been used for
radar imaging studies of equatorial ionospheric phenomena
at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory. We present plans for
adding an interferometric imaging capability to the EISCAT
Svalbard Radar (ESR), a capability which will contribute significantly
to several areas of active research, including naturally
and artificially enhanced ion-acoustic echoes and their
detailed relation in space and time to optical phenomena,
polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE), and meteor studies.
Interferometry using the two antennas of the ESR has
demonstrated the existence of extremely narrow, fieldaligned
scattering structures, but having only a single baseline
is a severe limitation for such studies. Building additional
IS-class antennas at the ESR is not a trivial task. However,
the very high scattering levels in enhanced ion-acoustic
echoes and PMSE means that a passive receiver antenna of
more modest gain should still be capable of detecting these
echoes.
In this paper we present simulations of what an imaging
interferometer will be capable of observing for different
antenna configurations and brightness distributions, under
ideal conditions, using two different image inversion algorithms.
We also discuss different antenna and receiver technologies
Two-Body Cabibbo-Suppressed Charmed Meson Decays
Singly-Cabibbo-suppressed decays of charmed particles governed by the quark
subprocesses and are analyzed using a
flavor-topology approach, based on a previous analysis of the Cabibbo-favored
decays governed by . Decays to and , where is a
pseudoscalar meson and is a vector meson, are considered. We include
processes in which and are produced.Comment: 18 pages, latex, 2 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.
Comments on the Quark Content of the Scalar Meson
Based on the measurements of we determine, in
a model independent way, the allowed content in the scalar meson
. We find that, on the one hand, if this isoscalar resonance is a
pure state [ , a very
large -annihilation term will be needed to accommodate . On the other hand, the component of
should be small enough to avoid excessive induced
from the external -emission. Measurement of production in the
decay will be useful to test the above picture. For the
decay which is kinematically barely or even not
allowed, depending on the mass of , we find that the finite width
effect of plays a crucial role on the resonant three-body decay
.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure
Hadronic Charmed Meson Decays Involving Tensor Mesons
Charmed meson decays into a pseudoscalar meson P and a tensor meson T are
studied. The charm to tensor meson transition form factors are evaluated in the
Isgur-Scora-Grinstein-Wise (ISGW) quark model. It is shown that the
Cabibbo-allowed decay is dominated by the
W-annihilation contribution and has the largest branching ratio in
decays. We argue that the Cabibbo-suppressed mode
should be suppressed by one order of magnitude relative to . When the finite width effect of the tensor resonances is taken
into account, the decay rate of is generally enhanced by a factor of
. Except for , the predicted branching ratios
of decays are in general too small by one to two orders of magnitude
compared to experiment. However, it is very unlikely that the
transition form factors can be enhanced by a factor of within the
ISGW quark model to account for the discrepancy between theory and experiment.
As many of the current data are still preliminary and lack sufficient statistic
significance, more accurate measurements are needed to pin down the issue.Comment: 11 page
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