Investigating the Spatial and Temporal Structuring of E-region Plasma Turbulence Using Coherent Scatter

The SIMONe Norway Meteor Radar System is used to investigate E-region coherent scatter in the Fennoscandia sector. We use the coherent scatter from meter scale turbulence as a tracer for the larger scale drivers of the turbulence. E-region coherent scatter requires a combination of large electric fields for turbulence to be present and a large plasma density for a sufficient radar scattering cross-section. A 2-dimensional Fourier analysis is used to determine the range rates of the turbulence generating processes which are compared with the Doppler shift of the coherent scatter. We also investigate the temporal and spatial characteristics of the coherent scatter at large scales in the reference frame of the range rates. A shallowing of the spectral index slope is found at spatial sizes smaller than 10 km, potentially corresponding to energetic particle precipitation region scale sizes. The spectral index slopes at spatial scale sizes between 100-10 km were found to be between -1.5 to -3.0. The spectral index slopes for temporal periods of 1000-100 s were found to be between -0.5 to -3.2.