Bistatic auroral radar system and three‐receiver‐ionospheric‐motions velocities: A comparison

Observations of the NW‐SE component of F region convection obtained with a scintillation drift experiment have been compared with power and Doppler velocity measurements of auroral E region coherent backscatter at 50 MHz made with the Bistatic Auroral Radar System (BARS), which is able to observe only at large magnetic aspect angles. It was found that E region backscatter was observed only when the NW–SE component of the F region drift was in the SE direction. This and other observations are shown to be consistent with a recently proposed explanation for these large aspect angle VHF backscatter observations, based on refraction through auroral ionization structures in the E region. In most cases the vector velocity derived from BARS observations had a magnitude substantially below that inferred from the scintillation measurements. Observations during one period were noticeably different from the others, with unusually small Doppler velocities.