Presentation 1 : Oral
EISCAT and SuperDARN, ionospheric radars in key regions to study the Sun-Earth relations (PNST)
Jean-Paul Villain et Denis Alcaydé
The EISCAT and SuperDARN ionsopheric radars are international large
scale facilities in which France plays a major role. The EISCAT
(European Incoherent SCATter) facility is a set of three incoherent
scatter radars located in northern Scandinavia and Svalbard. Incoherent
scatter radars are able to provide detailed studies of most ionospheric
parameters such as electron density, plasma velocity, ion and electron
temperatures, as well as the ion composition. The SuperDARN (Super Dual
Auroral Radar Network) is a set of 15 coherent HF radars whose combined
fields of view cover most of the northern and southern hemisphere
auroral zones and polar cap regions. They can provide high spatial and
temporal resolution maps of the ionospheric plasma convection, giving
thus a global view of the evolution of the magnetosphere in response to
the stimuli of the interplanetary medium. We will review both experiments
and highlight their capabilities with selected experimental results.