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[1] In recent years, large electron temperature increases of 300% (3000 K above background) caused by powerful HF-radio wave injection have been observed during nighttime using the EISCAT incoherent scatter radar near Tromsø in northern Norway. In a case study we examine the spatial structure of the modified region. The electron heating is accompanied by ion heating of about 100 degrees and magnetic field-aligned measurements show ion outflows increasing with height up to 300 m s À1 at 582 km. The electron density decreases by up to 20%. When the radar antenna was scanned between three elevations from near field-aligned to vertical, the strongest heating effects were always obtained in the field-aligned position. When the HF-pump beam was scanned between the same three positions, the heating was still almost always strongest in the field-aligned direction. Simultaneous images of the 630 nm O( 1 D) line in the radio-induced aurora showed that the enhancement caused by the HF radio waves also remained localized near the field-aligned position. Coherent HF radar backscatter also appeared strongest when the pump beam was pointed field-aligned. These results are similar to some Langmuir turbulence phenomena which also show a strong preference for excitation by HF rays launched in the field-aligned direction. The correlation of the position of largest temperature enhancement with the position of the radio-induced aurora suggests that a common mechanism, upper-hybrid wave turbulence, is responsible for both effects. Why the strongest heating effects occur for HF rays directed along the magnetic field is still unclear, but self-focusing on field-aligned striations is a candidate mechanism, and possibly ionospheric tilts may be important.

Observations of strongly enhanced ion acoustic shoulders of the incoherent scatter spectrum at 933 MHz at altitudes from 138 to 587 km have been obtained with the European Incoherent Scatter UHF radar. The enhancements can be up to 1 or 2 orders of magnitude in total backscattered power and can occur at either one or both of the ion acoustic shoulders. They show a variation of frequency with height of about 2 to 1, the same as the normal ion line spectral width and the ion temperature. These unusual spectra appear in two preferred height regions having different characteristics, one below 200 km and one above about 300 km. The enhancements are associated with geomagnetic disturbance, high electron temperatures, auroral arcs, and red aurora in the F region. The observations, which are mainly along the magnetic field direction, indicate that field‐aligned thermal electron drifts are destabilizing the ion acoustic waves. They confirm and extend the one other publication reporting on similar echoes. We suggest that field‐aligned flows of soft electrons depositing their energy at horizontally poor conducting F region heights are the cause of parallel electric fields in the ionosphere. These fields then produce the thermal electron motions that we argue have to be the cause of the observations.

.[1] We report from the first campaign, with the EISCAT radars and heating facility, which looked for a proposed new PMSE overshoot effect resulting when PMSE is being affected by a specific cycling of artificial electron heating. The overshoot was predicted to appear after unaffected PMSE dusty plasma had been acted upon, for a comparatively short time, by the EISCAT Heating facility. We show model results and observational examples of the overshoot effect. For the overshoot to be clearly observable, a long relaxation time after the heater is switched off is necessary to get the dust charges back to those of dust unaffected by the heated electrons or, to bring unaffected PMSE dusty plasma into the radar beams by horizontal wind transport. The overshoot characteristic curve (OCC) contain a substantial amount of information on the conditions during PMSE and must lead to new possibilities in the study of PMSE and the conditions close to the summer mesopause.