Analyzing conditions of the mid-latitude outer ionosphere from Irkutsk is radar measurement data

To examine characteristics of the outer ionosphere from data obtained by the incoherent scatter (IS) technique, we have used an approach accounting for deviation of plasma conditions from diffusion equilibrium due to its motion along the geomagnetic field. This approach rests on the fact that the effective height scale of electron density distribution in the outer ionosphere according to IS data depends not only on a plasma height scale but also on a diffusion flow of plasma and a neutral wind velocity component along geomagnetic field lines.