Studies of the mesosphere-lower thermosphere over the South Pole using an all-sky interferometric meteor radar

An interferometric meteor radar was installed at the South Pole in January 2001. Accurate determination of the angle of arrival of the meteors is important for our science objectives. A new algorithm to estimate the angle of arrival of meteors is developed and two calibration algorithms are compared. Echo rates are found to be independent of the time of day and greater in the summer than in the winter by a factor of three. Most echoes are detected at elevation angles near the pointing direction of the antennas and in the beam that is pointing closest to the apex.; Understanding the generation, propagation, and interaction of tides is important to comprehend the atmosphere as a whole. Spectral and harmonic analyses are performed to calculate the amplitudes and phases of the tides. The migrating diurnal tide is consistent from year to year. The nonmigrating semidiurnal tide exhibits more year-to-year variability. The interferometric meteor radar allows us to look at the vertical structure of the tidal components over the South Pole for the first time. Phase progressions are found to be modest for both tidal components indicating limited vertical propagation.; Two collocated meteor radars operate simultaneously at the South Pole. This gives us an opportunity to validate different systems and processing techniques. More importantly, the potential gains brought by having interferometric capabilities can be studied. It is determined that the non-interferometric results can underestimate the amplitude of the nonmigrating semidiurnal tide by 20%.; Finally, our tidal results are compared to previous observations over Antarctica and model results. The aim is to understand the temporal and spatial behavior of the observed tides and determine the long-term and synoptic-scale connections of the tides over the continent. Relatively good agreement is found with other experimental results. Also, our results are in agreement with the notion that the nonmigrating semidiurnal tide is generated by the nonlinear interaction of a stationary planetary wave and the migrating semidiurnal tide.