HR: 11:20h
AN: SA12A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: A multi-instrument technique for localization of radio wave scintillation in the equatorial ionosphere
AU: * Miller, E S
EM: esmiller@uiuc.edu
AF: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1308 W Main St, Urbana, IL 61801, United States
AU: Makela, J J
EM: jmakela@uiuc.edu
AF: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1308 W Main St, Urbana, IL 61801, United States
AB: Although ground-based scintillation monitoring has revealed much about the irregularities that cause scintillation, this technique has limited geographic coverage and requires knowledge of the irregularity altitude to infer scale information. GPS radio occultation experiments provide a source of scintillation measurements at geographically diverse locations and geometries impossible with ground-based scintillation monitors. In their simplest form, radio occultation experiments localize regions of scintillation to the ray path between the transmitter and receiver. Radio wave back-propagation techniques have been employed in the past to compute the range to irregularities; however, it is also instructive to obtain a three-dimensional view of irregularity regions. We present a new technique that integrates GPS radio occultations with ground-based narrow-field airglow imaging. Plasma depletions seen in the airglow images are extruded along the geomagnetic field to create a three-dimensional representation of the depleted flux tubes. Intersections between the depleted flux tubes and occultation ray paths are computed, yielding an estimate for the altitude distribution of scintillation irregularities. We present results of 26 coincident imaging/occultation observations in the South American sector during the 2006--2007 spread F season.
DE: 2415 Equatorial ionosphere
DE: 2439 Ionospheric irregularities
DE: 2494 Instruments and techniques
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting