Meteorological and aeronomical requirements for MST radar networks (keynote paper), part 1

Mesosphere - stratosphere - troposphere (MST) radar are phase coherent radars that measure the amplitude and Doppler shift of radio waves that are scattered back to the receiving antennas. For a monostatic system, the line-of-sight projection of the wind vector is obtained if one assumes that the atmospheric scatterers are being swept along with the wind velocity. The three-dimensional wind is then derived either by using multiple beams or by beam swinging. The turbulence intensity is derived either by measuring the backscattered power or by deriving the width of the autocorrelation function for the wind. Furthermore, some information on sharp changes in the atmospheric static stability (e.g., at the tropopause) can be obtained by looking for specular reflections. The discussion addresses the question of how these MST measurement capabilities can contribute to various meteorological and aeronomical research areas.