The ground-based, high-frequency radars of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) observe backscatter from ionospheric field-aligned plasma irregularities and features on the Earth’s surface out to ranges of several thousand kilometers via over-the-horizon propagation of transmitted radio waves. Interferometric techniques can be applied to the received signals at the primary and secondary antenna arrays to measure the vertical angle of arrival, or elevation angle, for more accurate geolocation of SuperDARN observations. Calibration of SuperDARN interferometer measurements however remains challenging for several reasons, including a 2$\pi$ ambiguity in the phase correction factor needed to account for differences in the electrical path lengths between signals received at the two antenna arrays. We present a new technique using multi-frequency ionospheric and ground backscatter observations for the calibration of SuperDARN interferometer data, and demonstrate its application to both historical and recent data.

Propagation of high-frequency (HF) radio signals is strongly dependent on the ionospheric electron density structure along a communications link. The ground-based, HF space weather radars of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) utilize the ionospheric refraction of transmitted signals to monitor the global circulation of E- and F-region plasma irregularities. Previous studies have assessed the propagation characteristics of backscatter echoes from ionospheric irregularities in the auroral and polar regions of the Earth’s ionosphere. By default, the geographic location of these echoes are found using empirical models which estimate the virtual backscattering height from the measured range along the radar signal path. However, the performance of these virtual height models has not yet been evaluated for mid-latitude SuperDARN radar observations or for ground scatter propagation modes. In this study, we derive a virtual height model suitable for mid-latitude SuperDARN observations using 5 years of data from the Christmas Valley East and West radars. This empirical model can be applied to both ionospheric and ground scatter observations and provides an improved estimate of the ground range to the backscatter location compared to existing high-latitude virtual height models. We also identify a region of overlapping half-hop F-region ionospheric scatter and one-hop E-region ground scatter where the measured radar parameters (e.g., velocity, spectral width, elevation angle) are insufficient to discriminate between the two scatter types. Further studies are required to determine whether these backscatter echoes of ambiguous origin are observed by other mid-latitude SuperDARN radars and their potential impact on scatter classification schemes.

The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) is a collection of radars built to study ionospheric convection. We use a 7-year archive of SuperDARN convection maps, processed in 3 different ways, to build a statistical understanding of dusk-dawn asymmetries in the convection patterns. We find that the dataset processing alone can introduce a bias which manifests itself in dusk-dawn asymmetries. We find that the solar wind clock angle affects the balance in the strength of the convection cells. We further find that the location of the positive potential foci is most likely observed at latitudes of 78◦ for long periods (>300 minutes) of southward IMF, as opposed to 74◦ for short periods (<20 minutes) of steady IMF. For long steady dawnward IMF the median is also at 78◦. For long steady periods of duskward IMF, the positive potential foci tends to be at lower latitudes than the negative potential and vice versa during dawnward IMF. For long periods of steady Northward IMF, the positive and negative cells can swap sides in the convection pattern.We find that they move from ~0-9 MLT to 15 MLT or ~15-23 MLT to 10 MLT, which reduces asymmetry in the average convection cell locations for Northward IMF. We also investigate the width of the region in which the convection returns to the dayside, the return flow width. Asymmetries in this are not obvious, until we select by solar wind conditions, when the return flow region is widest for the negative convection cell during Southward IMF.

The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) was built to study ionospheric convection and has in recent years been expanded geographically. Alongside software developments, this has resulted in many different versions of the convection maps dataset being available. Using data from 2012 to 2018, we produce five different versions of the widely used convection maps, using limited backscatter ranges, background models and the exclusion/inclusion of data from specific radar groups such as the mid-latitude radars. This enables us to simulate how much information was missing from previous decades of SuperDARN research. We study changes in the Heppner-Maynard boundary, the cross polar cap potential (CPCP), the number of backscatter echoes (n) and the χ-squared/n statistic which is a measure of the global agreement between the measured and fitted velocities. We find that the CPCP is reduced when the polar cap radars are introduced, but then increases again when the mid-latitude radars are added. When the background model is changed from the RG96 model, to the most recent TS18 model, the CPCP tends to decrease for lower values, but tends to increase for higher values. When comparing to geomagnetic indices, we find that there is on average a linear relationship between the Heppner-Maynard boundary and the geomagnetic indices, as well as n, which breaks at high values (e.g. HMB ~50 degrees) due to the low observational density. We find that whilst n is important in constraining the maps (maps with n>400 are unlikely to change), is insufficient as the sole measure of quality.

Lobe reconnection is usually thought to play an important role in geospace dynamics only when the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) is mainly northward. This is because the most common and unambiguous signature of lobe reconnection is the strong sunward convection in the polar cap ionosphere observed during these conditions. During more typical conditions, when the IMF is mainly oriented in a dawn-dusk direction, plasma flows initiated by dayside and lobe reconnection both map to high latitude ionospheric locations in close proximity to each other on the dayside. This makes the distinction of the source of the observed dayside polar cap convection ambiguous, as the flow magnitude and direction are similar from the two topologically different source regions. We here overcome this challenge by normalizing the ionospheric convection observed by the Super Dual Aurora Radar Network (SuperDARN) to the polar cap boundary, inferred from simultaneous observations from the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE). This new method enable us to separate and quantify the relative contribution of both lobe reconnection and dayside/nightside (Dungey cycle) reconnection during periods of dominating IMF By. Our main findings are twofold. First, the lobe reconnection rate can typically account for 20% of the Dungey cycle flux transport during local summer when IMF By is dominating and IMF Bz > 0. Second, the dayside convection relative to the open/closed boundary is vastly different in local summer versus local winter, as defined by the dipole tilt angle.