Ionospheric Radar HF DCE and DCN at Concordia

The Dome C East (DCE) and Dome C North (DCN) are High Frequency (HF) radars located at the Concordia research station in Antarctica. DCE and DCN are part of Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN). SuperDARN is an international network of HF ionospheric radars dedicated to the study of the magnetosphere-ionosphere system, in the framework of near-Earth space plasma processes and Sun-Earth relations (Greenwald et al. 1995; Chisham et al. 2007; Nishitani et al. 2019). SuperDARN comprises more than 30 radars placed at high and mid-latitudes in the two Hemispheres. In SuperDARN, pairs of radars typically located at 2000 km distance and oriented so that their beams cross each other over the region to be studied are used to get the ionospheric plasma velocity vector in two dimensions. The two companion radars DCE and DCN are very close to each other (about 500 m) and nearby the South geomagnetic pole. DCE and DCN form a common-volume pair with the SuperDARN South Pole radar (U.S.) and Zhong Shang radar (China), respectively. The DCE and DCN field of views extend over an area of the Southern Hemisphere polar cap and high latitudes regions of about 10×10⁶ km² making the DCE and DCN observations a fundamental contribution for the SuperDARN network. The SuperDARN radars, including DCE and DCN operate continuously.  SuperDARN main data product are the instantaneous maps of the F region ionospheric convection from mid-latitudes to the polar caps of the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. More in general, SuperDARN observations provide important information on Earth's space environment status. Indeed, SuperDARN is a very important infrastructure for the Space Weather (SW) research. The importance of SuperDARN radars observations for SW research has become more and more evident in the last years. Besides the importance of the radars observations for the understanding of the phenomena underlying SW (SW enabling science), such observations are fundamental for SW models development, validation and initialization (e. g. Gordeev 2015) and for the characterization and nowcasting of the ionosphere conditions (e.g. Berngardt et al. 2018). The SuperDARN radars are managed in a coordinated fashion by sixteen institutes in ten countries (Australia, Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States of America).