A unique experiment was undertaken during the nights of 27 and 28 February 2003. Tristatic Fabry‐Perot Interferometer (FPI) measurements of the upper thermosphere were co‐located with tristatic EISCAT radar measurements of the ionosphere. Tristatic measurements should remove assumptions of uniform wind fields and ion drifts, and zero vertical winds. The FPIs are located close to the 3 radars of the EISCAT configuration in northern Scandinavia. Initial studies indicate that the thermosphere is more dynamic and responsive to ionospheric forcing than expected. Mesoscale variations are observed on the scales of tens of kilometers and minutes. The magnitude of the upper thermosphere neutral wind dynamo field is on average 50% of the magnetospheric electric field and contributes an average magnitude of 41% of in‐situ Joule heating. The relative orientations of the 2 dynamo field vectors produce a standard deviation of ±65% in the contribution of the neutral wind dynamo.

Abstract. Gravity waves are an important feature of mesosphere -lower thermosphere (MLT) dynamics, observed using many techniques and providing an important mechanism for energy transfer between atmospheric regions. It is known that some gravity waves may propagate through the mesopause and reach greater altitudes before eventually "breaking" and depositing energy. The generation, propagation, and breaking of upper thermospheric gravity waves have not been studied directly often. However, their ionospheric counterparts, travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs), have been extensively studied in, for example, radar data. At high latitudes, it is believed localised auroral activity may generate gravity waves in-situ. Increases in sensor efficiency of Fabry-Perot Interferometers (FPIs) located in northern Scandinavia have provided higher time resolution measurements of the auroral oval and polar cap atomic oxygen red line emission at 630.0 nm. A Lomb-Scargle analysis of this data has shown evidence of gravity wave activity with periods ranging from a few tens of minutes to several hours. Oscillations are seen in the intensity of the line as well as the temperatures and line of sight winds. Instruments are located in Sodankylä, Finland; Kiruna, Sweden; Skibotn, Norway, and Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean. A case study is presented here, where a wave of 1.8 h period has a phase speed of 250 ms −1 with a propagation angle of 302 • , and a horizontal wavelength of 1600 km. All the FPIs are colocated with EISCAT radars, as well as being supplemented by a range of other instrumentation. This allows the waves found in the FPI data to be put in context with the ionosphere and atmosphere system. Consequently, the source region of the gravity waves can be determined.

Abstract.A new all-sky Fabry-Perot Interferometer called the Scanning Doppler Imager (SCANDI) was built and installed at Longyearbyen in December 2006. Observations have been made of the Doppler shifts and Doppler broadening of the 630 nm airglow and aurora, from which upper thermospheric winds and temperatures are calculated. SCANDI allows measurements over a field-of-view (FOV) with a horizontal radius of nearly 600 km for observations at an altitude of 250 km using a time resolution of 8 min. The instrument provides the ability to observe thermospheric spatial structure within a FOV which overlaps that of the EISCAT Svalbard radar and CUTLASS SuperDARN radars. Coordinating with these instruments provides an important opportunity for studying ion-neutral coupling. The all-sky image is divided into several sectors to provide a horizontal spatial resolution of between 100-300 km. This is a powerful extension in observational capability but requires careful calibration and data analysis, as described here. Two observation modes were used: a fixed and a scanning etalon gap. SCANDI results are corroborated using the Longyearbyen single look direction FPI, and ESR measurements of the ion temperatures. The data show thermospheric temperature gradients of a few Kelvins per kilometre, and a great deal of meso-scale variability on spatial scales of several tens of kilometres.

Abstract.First results are presented from a Scanning Doppler Imager (SCANDI) installed at the Nordlysstasjonen optical observatory near Longyearbyen, Svalbard (78.2 • N, 15.8 • E). Observations of the atomic oxygen 630 nm red line emission, originating in the upper thermosphere at around 250 km, have been used to determine neutral winds and temperatures from multiple zones within an extended spatial field. The instrument utilises all-sky optics to achieve multiple simultaneous measurements, compared to the standard Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) procedure of separate lineof-sight samples within a sequence of narrow angle look directions. SCANDI is colocated with such a standard FPI and comparison of neutral wind velocities between the instruments on the night of 15 March 2007 has revealed detailed and consistent structure in the wind field. Southward meridional wind enhancements of several hundred m/s are observed simultaneously with both instruments, revealing structure on scales not currently considered in thermospheric general circulation models (GCMs). The data from this night also demonstrate the influence of discrete auroral events on thermospheric behaviour. High intensities observed by SCANDI in the presence of auroral arcs coincide with a drop in measured neutral temperatures. This is interpreted as a result of the effective altitude of the 630 nm emission being lowered under conditions of soft auroral precipitation. The optical instruments as a consequence sample a region of lower temperature. This effect has been observed previously with lower thermospheric atomic oxygen emissions at 557.7 nm. The EISCAT Svalbard Radar (ESR) provides ion temperatures and electron densities for the night which confirm the influence of precipitation and heating during the auroral events. The minima of ion temperatures through the pre-midnight period provide a good match to the neutral temCorrespondence to: E. M. Griffin (eoghan@apl.ucl.ac.uk) peratures measured with SCANDI, and to the colocated FPI temperatures.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) DELTA rocket experiment, successfully launched from Andøya at 0033 UT on December 13, 2004, supported by ground based optical instruments, primarily 2 FabryPerot Interferometers (FPIs) located at Skibotn, Norway (69.3 • N, 20.4• E) and the KEOPS Site, Esrange, Kiruna, Sweden (67.8• N, 20.4• E). Both these instruments sampled the 557.7 nm lower thermosphere atomic oxygen emission and provided neutral temperatures and line-of-sight wind velocities, with deduced vector wind patterns over each site. All sky cameras allow contextual auroral information to be acquired. The proximity of the sites provided overlapping fields of view, adjacent to the trajectory of the DELTA rocket. This allowed independent verification of the absolute temperatures in the relatively quiet conditions early in the night, especially important given the context provided by co-located EISCAT ion temperature measurements which allow investigation of the likely emission altitude of the passive FPI measurements. The results demonstrate that this altitude changes from 120 km pre-midnight to 115 km post-midnight. Within this large scale context the results from the FPIs also demonstrate smaller scale structure in neutral temperatures, winds and intensities consistent with localised heating. These results present a challenge to the representation of thermospheric variability for the existing models of the region.