Possible NLC observations by radar from UK

[johnm]

There is a section on spaceweather.com today at spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=27&month=05&year=2015 showing the result of radar observations of the mesosphere from the MST radar in Wales. The plot may show NLC formation but as the article states it is not clear if the echos are from NLC or from some other conductive region in the mesosphere.

The daily plots of the Radar data appear on the NERC site at badc.nerc.ac.uk/browse/badc/mst/plots/m-mode.

If you look at the data for 26 May 2015 you should find an image similar to the one on spaceweather.com though it shows the whole day rather than the truncated plot on spaceweather.com. The radar showed the echos in the middle of the day so no chance of seeing them visually. ( The bottom is the timescale in UTC)

It will be worthwile comparing this data to any sightings of NLC over the UK though if this is vertically over Wales this may be a different part of the sky to what we will see visually illuminated.

One can also compare this to the AIM data though I think that may only show night time NLC

There appear to be records for several years so could be a useful project to go back through the data and correlate the radar with previous years observations over the UK.

Regards

John Murrell

[angelofmons]

John, just saw this post, a I've been using that RADAR with David Hooper, its director, for some time now.

Those returns can't, without further study, be deemed to necessarily indicate the presence of NLC, although they might well indicate suitable conditions for NLC to form.

Sometimes, these returns can indicate NLC presence, but the returns should be considered an associated phenomenon of NLC that, more often than not, do not indicate the presence of NLC.  They are more properly known as PMSE, which a search will tell you all about. 

So, in summary, sometimes PMSE indicate NLC, but usually they don't.