Tracing patterns in the Antarctic sky

The mesosphere, a deep layer of rarefied atmosphere, is home to giant atmospheric waves and tides, meteors and their smoky debris, ghostly noctilucent clouds and a unique pole-to-pole atmospheric circulation. A new meteor radar at the British Antarctic Survey's (BAS) Rothera research station in the Antarctic has been installed to study the mesosphere at its key polar latitudes. The radar, a collection of six stick-like antennas up to about four meters tall, works by detecting free electrons in the charged trails left by meteors in the mesosphere. The preliminary results have revealed details of the Antarctic part of the pole-to-pole circulation over Rothera and measured how it changes the atmospheric temperature.