AO Participation in the CEDAR 2021 workshop

The CEDAR 2021 workshop took place virtually between 20 June and 25 June 2021. It consisted of plenary talks in the mornings followed by multiple parallel sessions. The participation of the Space and Atmospheric Science (SAS) scientists of Arecibo Observatory (AO) in CEDAR 2021 workshop was extensive and well-received. AO scientists were first authors for five presentations and served as co-authors for additional presentations. AO senior scientist Shikha Raizada was invited to deliver two presentations while AO scientists Christiano Brum, Selvaraj Dharmalingam and Sukanta Sau contributed one presentation each. The session “TAD TIDs and MSTIDs” was organised by AO scientists Pedrina Terra and Christiano Brum in collaboration with scientists from other institutions. The results presented by the AO scientists comprised of vastly different research areas, including:  the study of metallic ions in the upper atmosphere with the help of Lidars; the study of TIDs from different latitude sectors to find out their characteristics and geomagnetic activity modulation; the investigation of the trend of topside ion temperature with multiple incoherent scatter radars (ISR) to understand the latitudinal dependency; and an estimation technique of rotational temperature from the Ebert-Fastie spectrometer airglow data obtained from Arecibo.  

“CEDAR is one of the largest organizations in the world whose research focus is on the terrestrial upper atmosphere and Ionosphere. As an early career scientist working on this domain, attending CEDAR workshop provides me a great opportunity to learn about the important research questions the CEDAR community is addressing at present,” says AO Postdoctoral scientist Dr. Sukanta Sau. “It allows me to showcase my research to the community, get their feedback and establish new collaborations.” 

“This is my first year as a researcher in the Arecibo Observatory and it was a great feeling to represent this renowned institute to the CEDAR community for the first time. Also, it was very important to participate in the CEDAR workshop this year as a member of the AO SAS group to highlight that good quality research is being carried out at AO even after the demise of the AO ISR, which was pivotal to the SAS research activities in AO,” says Dr. Sau. 

The topics of different sessions and presentations in this year’s CEDAR workshop demonstrate that the CEDAR community is interested in pursuing a broad range of research areas, including the study of the Atmosphere-Ionosphere-Magnetosphere (AIM) coupling processes, variabilities of the Atmosphere-Ionosphere system during storm time and quiet time conditions at different latitude sectors and study of long term trends in the Atmosphere-Ionosphere system to investigate the effects of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic causes. These areas of exploration are aligned with the current and future scientific interests and capabilities of the Arecibo Observatory. 

The Arecibo Observatory possesses a vast amount of ISR and optical data procured over several decades that provide information of the Atmosphere-Ionosphere system over large altitudinal and latitudinal regions. Even though the Arecibo ISR is not currently in operation, valuable optical data continues to be collected. Further, the Arecibo Observatory is uniquely located from a geographic as well as geomagnetic point of view. Therefore these datasets are a very important resource for the scientific topics that are of interest to the CEDAR community.  The Arecibo Observatory’s legacy and future datasets will continue to make critical contributions to the scientific goals of the CEDAR community. 

-- Written by AO Postdoctoral Scientist Dr. Sukanta Sau