The SOUSY Svalbard Radar and its Contributins to Study Polar Meteorology

The SOUSY Svalbard Radar (SSR) is located at 78° N, 16° E on the island of Spitsbergen/Svalbard. It is a VHF radar, operating on 53.5 MHz with 70 kW peak transmitter power and a phased array antenna. It has been used since 1998 for measurements of the reflectivity and the three-dimensional wind field in the troposphere, stratosphere, and, during summer, also in the mesopause region.

This radar has been technically upgraded by special data acquisition modes simultaneously covering large height ranges from the troposphere into the lower thermosphere. For this purpose, improved complementary code sets have been developed. The antenna array consists of 356 four-element Yagis yielding a gain of 33 dB and a beam width of 4 degrees. The beam direction is electronically steered into zenith and in 4 directions at 5 degrees zenith angle. Four sub-units, consisting of 36 Yagis each, can be taken out from the full array allowing reception for spaced antenna interferometer applications. Special transmit-receive switches have been designed for this purpose. The raw data are stored on tape and analyzed in real time for display on the institute's home page. These technical advances will be highlighted.

Besides intense studies of Polar Mesosphere Summer Echoes (PMSE), the SSR has been operated in several longer campaigns in the troposphere-stratosphere mode. We will present and briefly discuss observations of the wind field, the tropopause, frontal structures and particular strong lee wave events, which are characteristic of the polar region and the mountainous environment of Svalbard. We will also address the operation of the SSR in the future and its potential to be used in the wind profiler mode for studying polar climatology.