Ionospheric plasma fluctuations induced by the NWC very low frequency
signal transmitter
Abstract
The Australian NWC (North West Cape) signal transmitter is known to
strongly interfere with the topside ionosphere. We analyze 456
conjunctions between Swarm A, B and NWC, in addition to 58 conjunctions
between NorSat-1 and NWC. The in-situ measurements provided by these
satellites include the 16 Hz Swarm Advanced Plasma density dataset, and
the novel 1000 Hz plasma density measurements from the m-NLP system
aboard NorSat-1. We subject the data to a detailed PSD analysis and
subsequent superposed epoch analysis. This allows us to present
comprehensive statistics of the NWC-induced plasma fluctuations, both
their scale-dependency, and their climatology. The result should be seen
in the context of VLF signal transmitter-induced plasma density
fluctuations, where we find counter-evidence for the existence of
turbulent structuring induced by the NWC transmitter.