A review on the upper atmospheric sodium observations from India: Insights

This review article briefly brings out the historical development of atmospheric sodium (Na) measurements over India and the importance of coordinated measurements with multiple techniques to address physical processes in the Earth's upper atmosphere. These measurements were initiated in the early 1970s by observing Na airglow emission intensities with broad band airglow photometer from Mt. Abu, a low-latitude hill station in India. Considerable amount of night-to-night variations in nocturnal emission intensities of the Na airglow were observed. Later, investigations regarding the dependence with the magnetic activities from the equatorial and low latitudes were carried out and double-humped structures in the nocturnal variation of intensities were reported. With the advent of Na lidar at Gadanki around 2005, the measurements of atmospheric neutral Na atom concentration became possible and more frequent occurrences of sporadic Na layers over the magnetic low latitude station compared to other latitudes were detected indicating the role played by electrodynamics. Later, a possible relationship between E-region field aligned plasma irregularities and the concentration of neutral Na atoms was investigated using coordinated measurements of VHF radar and Na lidar. Further, simultaneous measurements with Na lidar and a narrow band airglow photometer with narrow field of view brought out the importance of coordinated observation wherein the characterization of gravity waves could be carried out and also revealed the importance of collisional quenching due to ambient molecules in the Na airglow emission processes. In addition, combining the ground based measurements of Na lidar and meteor wind radar along with satellite measurements made possible to hypothesize the over-turning Kelvin–Helmholtz billow in the Na layer manifests “C-type” or inverted lambda shape structures in the height-time-concentration map of neutral Na atoms. This review paper presents a synoptic view mostly based on the previously reported observations of Na airglow emission, Na lidar and coordinated Na airglow and Na lidar observations from the Indian sector and highlights the importance of simultaneous measurements of mesospheric Na and its emissions along with satellite-borne measurements to address interesting geophysical processes in the Earth's upper atmosphere.     

Identification of window frequency at different places of India

Millimeterwave window frequencies between the two successive absorption maxima of 60?GHz and 120?GHz respectively, play a significant role in the context of radar and communication applications. Atmospheric parameters like temperature, water vapour and oxygen play major roles for determination of window frequencies which are latitude dependent. Radiosonde data were analyzed to identify a frequency at which minimum signal attenuation occurs in the millimeterwave band, between 60?GHz and 120?GHz, at various places in India. The data are taken from British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC, U.K). Analysis shows that water vapour plays a dominant role for determining window frequency during the monsoon season. On the other hand, temperature dominates water vapour in shifting window frequency during the winter and summer seasons. The results obtained also show that minimum attenuation occurs at 73?GHz and maximum at 83?GHz over the chosen places in India during January to December depending on the latitudinal position. Another salient result obtained from our analyses is that water vapour is mainly responsible for lowering the window frequency from its conventionally accepted value, over certain places in India. Hence, these climatological parameters play a major role in determining window frequency over certain places of choice in India throughout the year.     

Modeling spatial density in low earth orbits using wavelets and random search

The events that occurred after 2007 such as Chinese anti-satellite test, explosion of Briz-M upper stage, break up of cosmos-2421 and collision of cosmos-2251 with Iridium-33 satellites have completely changed the spatial density patterns in low earth orbits. This has increased the risk of collision between active satellites and debris created by them. Aftermath, the risk assessment of possible collisions called as conjunction analysis of working satellites from day to day has become more crucial. Spatial density models are useful in understanding the long-term likelihood of a collision in a particular region of space and helpful in pre-launch orbit planning. In this paper we present an algorithmic procedure for automatically estimating exact model parameters corresponding to the peak location and number of peaks using wavelets that will speed up the parameter estimation process for the models with peaks.     

Determination of window frequency in the millimeter wave band in the range of 58° north through 45° south over the globe

The radiosonde data available from British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) for the latitudinal occupancy of 58° north through 45° south were analyzed to observe the variation of temperature and water vapor density. These two climatological parameters are largely assumed to be the influencing factors in determining the millimeter wave window frequencies over the chosen range of latitudes in between the two successive maxima occurring at 60 and 120 GHz. It is observed that between temperature and water vapor density, the later one is influencing mostly in determining the window frequency. It is also observed that the minima is occurring at 75 GHz through 94 GHz over the globe during the month January–February and 73 GHz through 85 GHz during the month July–August, depending on the latitudinal occupancy. It is observed that the large abundance of water vapor is mainly held responsible for shifting of minima towards the low value of frequencies. Hence, it is becoming most important to look at the climatological parameters in determining the window frequency at the place of choice.     

Variations in Electron Content Ratio and Semi-thickness Ratio during LSA and MSA periods and some Cyclone Genesis Periods using COSMIC satellite observations

In this study for the first time, COSMIC satellite data have been used to deduce values of ionospheric Electron Content Ratio (ECR) and Semi-thickness Ratio (Rtb) for Low Solar Activity (LSA) (2008) and Moderate Solar Activity (MSA) (2012) periods over the Indian low-latitude (15–30°N) region with 80–95°E longitude. These two ratios provide sensitive information about bottom and topside ionosphere for different geophysical conditions. Extraction of suspected patterns and discrepancies unfold that the deviations between ECR and Rtb values during LSA period are comparatively higher than that of MSA period when the diurnal variability in these two parameters is flatter along with the diurnal-dips during pre-noon hours. The correlative relationship of ECR exhibits low association with NmF2 and anti-correlation with HmF2, whereas its correlation with Rtb is extremely high. During Cyclone Genesis Period (CGP) strong dips in ECR and Rtb values with respect to pre and post CGP occurred which helps to take decisive conclusion about the ionospheric variations to be dominant through getting relatively higher Ne concentration in the bottom side part of the ionosphere.     

Modeling of sub-ionospheric VLF signal perturbations associated with total solar eclipse, 2009 in Indian subcontinent

During the total solar eclipse of 2009, a week-long campaign was conducted in the Indian sub-continent to study the low-latitude D-region ionosphere using the very low frequency (VLF) signal from the Indian Navy transmitter (call sign: VTX3) operating at 18.2 kHz. It was observed that in several places, the signal amplitude is enhanced while in other places the amplitude is reduced. We simulated the observational results using the well known Long Wavelength Propagation Capability (LWPC) code. As a first order approximation, the ionospheric parameters were assumed to vary according to the degree of solar obscuration on the way to the receivers. This automatically brought in non-uniformity of the ionospheric parameters along the propagation paths. We find that an assumption of 4 km increase of lower ionospheric height for places going through totality in the propagation path simulate the observations very well at Kathmandu and Raiganj. We find an increase of the height parameter by h^′=+3.0$h^{\prime }=+3.0$ km for the VTX-Malda path and h^′=+1.8$h^{\prime }=+1.8$ km for the VTX-Kolkata path. We also present, as an example, the altitude variation of electron number density throughout the eclipse time at Raiganj.