First Observation of Ionospheric Convection From the Jiamusi HF Radar During a Strong Geomagnetic Storm

Abstract

Abstract The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) is an international low‐power high‐frequency (HF) radar network, which provides continuous observations of the motion of plasma in the ionosphere. Over the past 15 years, the network has expanded dramatically in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere to improve the observation capabilities of the network during periods of strong geomagnetic disturbance. However, a large coverage gap still exists in the middle latitudes. A newly deployed middle‐latitude HF radar in China (the Jiamusi radar) is about to join the network. This paper presents the first observation of the ionospheric convection from the Jiamusi radar during the strong geomagnetic storm on 26 August 2018. The Jiamusi measurements are compared with the simultaneous measurements from the SuperDARN Hokkaido East radar. The features of the high‐velocity westward flows including the equatorward expansion and variation tendency of the line‐of‐sight velocities observed by the two radars are consistent with each other. According to joint analysis with auroral images, we can confirm that the westward flows observed by the two radars are sunward return flows of the duskside convection cell in the auroral region. The impact the Jiamusi data had on the calculation of SuperDARN convection patterns is also examined. The results show that the inclusion of the Jiamusi data can increase the number of gridded line‐of‐sight velocity measurements by up to 24.42%, the cross‐polar cap potential can be increased by up to 13.90% during the investigated period.

Keywords

• New HF radar
• First observation
• Data validation
• Data application