First observations of the PMSE overshoot effect and its use for investigating the conditions in the summer mesosphere

Abstract

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. Copyright 2003 by the American Geophysical Union.