Abstract
Assuming that their observations of the weak echoes of high frequency radio waves scattered from the lower ionosphere were caused by Fresnel reflections from discontinuities in the refractive index, Gardner and Pawsey1 developed a method for determining the height distribution Ne(h) of the D-region electron densities from observations of the ratio Ax/Ao (h) of the back-scattered amplitudes of the extraordinary and ordinary magneto-ionic components. This ‘partial reflection’ method turned out to be a useful tool for studies of the ionospheric D-region2–5. We compare here observations of weak radio echoes from the ionospheric D-region, with model computations of radio wave scattering, based on in situ measurements of ionospheric irregularities. The results show excellent agreement, indicating that an important source of the weak partial reflections has been identified.
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Thrane, E., Grandal, B., Flå, T. et al. Fine structure in the ionospheric D-region. Nature 292, 221–223 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/292221a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/292221a0
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