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High-latitude mesospheric intense turbulence associated with high-speed solar wind streams

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Abstract

Intense turbulence is frequently observed in the polar mesosphere summer echoes (PMSE) from the data of very high frequency radar operating at Esrange, Sweden. The turbulence can be estimated from the turbulent energy dissipation rate (\(\epsilon \)) by considering aspect sensitivity. We find that variation in turbulence at altitude 82–86 km is in a good correlation with enhanced geomagnetic disturbances and precipitating energetic electrons into the mesosphere induced by high-speed solar wind streams. In addition, intense turbulence (a few tens of mW/kg) frequently occurs in the common volume with large plasma/neutral horizontal speeds (\(\geq 150~\text{m}\,\text{s}^{-1}\)) at 82–90 km altitudes. The large velocities are ready to form wind shear/shift. Therefore, we suggest that the summer mesospheric turbulence is to a significant extent accompanied by large plasma/neutral velocities and wind shear in the mesosphere, in turn linked to solar wind energy input during geomagnetic disturbances.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science & ICT (2018M1A3A3A02066015). ESRAD is a joint venture between the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and the Swedish Space Corporation (Esrange, Sweden). We thank Professor Sheila Kirkwood for providing invaluable comments and discussions in retrieving fruitful results from the ESRAD data. We thank GSFC/SPDF OMNIWeb for the provision of the solar wind parameters and geomagnetic activity indices used in this study. The authors also would like to express their appreciation of the National Centre for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for granting permission to use the MEPED data on the POES, which was downloaded from http://satdat.ngdc.noaa.gov/sem/poes/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy and Space Science, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Young-Sook Lee & Yongha Kim

  2. Division of Science Education, College of Education, Daegu University, Gyeongsan, Republic of Korea

    Kyung-Chan Kim

  3. Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Young-Sil Kwak

  4. Department of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Young-Sil Kwak

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  1. Young-Sook Lee
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Lee, YS., Kim, KC., Kwak, YS. et al. High-latitude mesospheric intense turbulence associated with high-speed solar wind streams. Astrophys Space Sci 364, 210 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-019-3691-0

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