Radar studies of turbulence and lidar studies of the nickel layer in the Arctic mesosphere

Abstract

This thesis presents studies of the Arctic middle atmosphere using Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) and resonance lidar at Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR), Chatanika, Alaska. The Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar (PFISR) provides measurements of mesospheric turbulence and the resonance lidar provides measurements of mesospheric nickel layer. We develop retrieval and analysis techniques to determine the characteristics of the turbulence and the nickel layer. We present measurements of mesospheric turbulence with PFISR on 23 April 2008 and 18 February 2013. We characterize mesospheric turbulence in terms of the energy dissipation rate as a function of altitude and time on these days. We present an extensive analysis of the radar measurements to show that the use of high quality PFISR data and an accurate characterization of the geophysical conditions are essential to achieve accurate turbulent measurements. We find that the retrieved values of the energy dissipation rate vary significantly based on how the data is selected. We present measurements of mesospheric nickel layer with resonance lidar on the night of 27-28 November 2012 and 20-21 December 2012. We characterize the mesospheric nickel layer in terms of the nickel concentration as a function of altitude on these days. We find that our nickel concentrations are significantly higher than expected from studies of meteors. We present an extensive analysis of the lidar measurements to show that these measurements of unexpectedly high values of the nickel concentrations are accurate and not biased by the lidar measurements.