CUPRI system configuration for NLC-91 and
observations of PMSE during Salvo A
The Cornell University portable radar interferometer (CUPRI) provided
nearly continuous monitoring of the mesosphere above Esrange, Sweden
during the noctilucent cloud rocket and radar campaign of the summer
of 1991 (NLC-91). CUPRI probed the mesosphere above Esrange from 78
to 91 km altitude with 300-meter resolution and was sensitive to the
enhanced polar mesospheric summer echoes (PMSE) that occur in the same
altitude range as NLC formations. Out of the total of 264 hours of
CUPRI observation time, PMSE were present for 140 hours. Rocket Salvo
A was flown on the night of August 9-10 into an NLC event that
occurred simultaneously with a thin and weakening PMSE layer.
High-resolution Doppler spectrograms of this PMSE event revealed
sawtooth-like discontinuities at ~ 83 km altitude, which we interpret
to be a distorted partial reflection layer which was advected across
the radar beam.
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