R. F. Woodman’s research while affiliated with Instituto Geofísico del Perú and other places

The purpose of these historical notes is to present the early history of the Jicamarca Radio Observatory (JRO), a research facility that has been conducting observations and studies of the equatorial ionosphere for more than 50 years. We have limited the scope of these notes to the period of the construction of the observatory and roughly the first decade of its operation. Specifically, this period corresponds to the directorships under Kenneth Bowles, Donald Farley, and Tor Hagfors and the first period of Ronald Woodman, i.e., the years between 1960 and 1974. Within this time frame, we will emphasize observational and instrumental developments which led to define the capabilities of the Jicamarca incoherent scatter (IS) radar to measure the different physical parameters of the ionosphere. At the same time, we partially cover the early history of the IS technique which has been used by many other observatories built since. We will also briefly mention the observatory's early and most important contributions to our understanding of the physical mechanisms behind the many peculiar phenomena that occur at the magnetic Equator. Finally, we will put special emphasis on the important developments of the instrument and its observing techniques that frame the capabilities of the radar at that time.

In an attempt to reproduce experimental results obtained in the early days of operations, electron density profiles have been measured at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory at altitudes reaching L=2. The methodology involves using a combination of pulses, including pulses as long as 4 ms, and processing the data with matched filtering. The modern experiments are complicated by systemic, time-dependent bias in the noise estimators as well as by clutter from satellites and space debris, including a geosynchronous satellite. Ultimately, experiment performance comparable to what was achieved in the original experiments could be achieved and should be surpassed in future experiments when all four of the Jicamarca transmitters will be utilized.

The SOUSY (SOUnding SYstem) radar was relocated to the Jicamarca Radio Observatory (JRO) near Lima, Peru, in 2000, where the radar controller and acquisition system were upgraded with state-of-the-art parts to take full advantage of its potential for high-resolution atmospheric sounding. Due to its broad bandwidth (4 MHz), it is able to characterize clear-air backscattering with high range resolution (37.5 m). A campaign conducted at JRO in July 2014 aimed to characterize the lower troposphere with a high temporal resolution (8.1 Hz) using the DataHawk (DH) small unmanned aircraft system, which provides in situ atmospheric measurements at scales as small as 1 m in the lower troposphere and can be GPS-guided to obtain measurements within the beam of the radar. This was a unique opportunity to make coincident observations by both systems and to directly compare their in situ and remotely sensed parameters. Because SOUSY only points vertically, it is only possible to retrieve vertical radar profiles caused by changes in the refractive index within the resolution volume. Turbulent variations due to scattering are described by the structure function parameter of refractive index Cn². Profiles of Cn² from the DH are obtained by combining pressure, temperature, and relative humidity measurements along the helical trajectory and integrated at the same scale as the radar range resolution. Excellent agreement is observed between the Cn² estimates obtained from the DH and SOUSY in the overlapping measurement regime from 1200 m up to 4200 m above sea level, and this correspondence provides the first accurate calibration of the SOUSY radar for measuring Cn².

We report results of preliminary high-resolution in situ atmospheric measurements through the boundary layer and lower atmosphere over the southern coast of Perú. This region of the coast is of particular interest because it lies adjacent to the northern coastal edge of the sub-tropical south-eastern Pacific, a very large area of ocean having a persistent stratus deck located just below the marine boundary layer (MBL) inversion. Typically, the boundary layer in this region during winter is topped by a quasi-permanent, well-defined, and very large temperature gradient. The data presented herein examine fine-scale details of the coastal atmosphere at a point where the edge of this MBL extends over the coastline as a result of persistent onshore flow. Atmospheric data were gathered using a recently-developed in-house constructed, GPS-controlled, micro-autonomous-vehicle aircraft (the DataHawk). Measured quantities include high-resolution profiles of temperature, wind, and turbulence structure from the surface to 1,300 m.

The first simultaneous observations of thermospheric winds and zonal ion drifts have been ob-tained at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory using a new Fabry-Perot interferometer observatory installed on a mountain ridge overlooking the valley where the JRO radar is located. The re-sults show that the neutral winds and ion drifts generally have the same speed and temporal variation characteristics. These results illustrate the simultaneous detection of the midnight temperature maximum as well. The paper will also describe efforts to obtain common volume measurements of thermospheric winds and temperatures utilizing the FPI Arequipa observatory which is located 4 degrees south of the geomagnetic equator.

For many years strong radar echoes coming from 140–170 km altitudes at low latitudes have been associated to the existence of field-aligned irregularities (FAIs) (the so called 150-km echoes). In this work, we present frequency spectra as well as angular distribution of 150-km echoes. When the 150-km region is observed with beams perpendicular to the magnetic field (B) the observed radar spectra are very narrow with spectral widths between 3–12 m/s. On the other hand, when few-degrees off-perpendicular beams are used, the radar spectra are wide with spectral widths comparable to those expected from ion-acoustic waves at these altitudes (>1000 m/s). Moreover the off-perpendicular spectral width increases with increasing altitude. The strength of the received echoes is one to two orders of magnitude stronger than the expected level of waves in thermal equilibrium at these altitudes. Such enhancement is not due to an increase in electron density. Except for the enhancement in power, the spectra characteristics of off-perpendicular and perpendicular echoes are in reasonable agreement with expected incoherent scatter spectra at these angles and altitudes. 150-km echoes are usually observed in narrow layers (2 to 5). Bistatic common volume observations as well as observations made few kilometers apart show that, for most of the layers, there is very high correlation on power fluctuations without a noticeable time separation between simultaneous echoes observed with Off-perpendicular and Perpendicular beams. However, in one of the central layers, the echoes are the strongest in the perpendicular beam and absent or very weak in the off-perpendicular beams, suggesting that they are generated by a plasma instability. Our results indicate that most echoes around 150-km region are not as aspect sensitive as originally thought, and they come from waves that have been enhanced above waves in thermal equilibrium.

1] This paper presents recent observations of the proton gyroresonance over Jicamarca. In October 2006, a single-polarization double-pulse experiment was set up to measure the first gyroresonance peak in the incoherent scatter (IS) auto-correlation function (ACF). Despite the clutter caused by Spread-F and artificial satellites, it was possible to measure the first proton gyroresonance peak of the ACF in the topside ionosphere. For the first time, least-squares fits of theoretical IS ACFs to gyroresonance measurements are reported. Theoretical ACFs that best fit the measurements were found using the H + fraction and temperature (assuming T e = T i) as fitting parameters. Uncertainties for the estimated fraction of H + were as low as 12%, while uncertainties for estimated temperatures were around 30%. These are the first successful gyroresonance measurements since the early observations of Farley (1967), and it is the first time measurements of this type have been used to obtain least squares estimates of ion composition and temperatures. An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2007 American Geophysical Union. To view the published open abstract, go to http://dx.doi.org and enter the DOI.

We present, for the first time, the main sources of sporadic meteors as inferred from meteor-head echoes obtained by a high-power large-aperture radar (HPLAR). Such results have been obtained at the Jicamarca HPLAR (11.95° S, 76.87° W, 1° dip angle). Observations are based on close to 170,000 meteors detected in less than 90 h spread over 14 days, between November 2001 and February 2006. Meteors with solar orbits are observed to come from basically six previously known sources, i.e., North and South Apex, Helion, Anti-Helion, and North and South Toroidal, representing ∼91% of the observations. The other ∼9% represents meteors with observed velocities greater than the Sun's escape velocity at 1 AU, most of them of extra-solar origin. Results are given before and after removing the Earth's velocity and the sources are modeled with two-dimensional Gaussian distributions. In general, our results are in very good agreement with previously known sources reported by Jones and Brown [Jones, J., Brown, P.G., 1993. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 265, 524–532] using mainly specular meteor radar (SMR) data gathered over many years and different sites. However, we find slightly different locations and widths, that could be explained on the basis of different sensitivities of the two techniques and/or corrections needed to our results. For example, we find that the North and South Apex sources are well defined and composed each of them of two collocated Gaussian distributions, one almost isotropic with ∼10° width and the other very narrow in ecliptic longitude and wide in ecliptic latitude. This is the first time these narrow-width sources are reported. A careful quantitative analysis is needed to be able to compare the strengths of meteor sources as observed with different techniques. We also present speed and initial altitude distributions for selected sources. Using a simple angular sensitivity function of the combined Earth–atmosphere–radar instrument, and an altitude selection criteria, the resulting meteor sources are in better qualitative agreement with the results obtained with SMRs.

The MPI-SOUSY radar has been moved from its original location at the Harz Mountains, Germany, to the Jicamarca Observatory. Two main modifications have been made to the system: 1) The antenna array now consist of 126 Yagis deployed in an square array of 16x16, 4 element Yagis, similar to the original ones, and 2) the control and data acquisition system has been modernized as described later on. The phase steering system has not been implemented yet, but is planned for the future. Figure 1 shows schematically the disposition of the Yagis and their interconnexion in the array. For the particular application described in this paper, they are all connected with the same phase, therefore the full array is practically pointing towards the zenith. Figure 2 shows a picture of the same in context with the Jicamarca main antenna. One of the objectives of the move was to take advantage of the wider bandwidth of the SOUSY transmitter to obtain higher altitude-resolution radar measurements than it had been obtained at VHF frequencies in the past (50 MHz range in particular), at both atmospheric and ionospheric heights. Very stringent frequency allocation bandwidth at the Harz had limited its operation to 150 meter Gaussian shape pulses.