Studying the ionosphere with the incoherent scatter radar during the magnetic storm of January 10, 1997

Specific features of the variations and structure of the ionosphere above northern Europe during the known magnetospheric storm of January 10, 1997, have been analyzed using the oblique-incidence backscatter (OIB) methods. The OIB equipment installed near St. Petersburg, Gor'kovskaya (AANII), represent a BIZON small radar, the data of which were compared with the CUTLASS radar data, GPS observations of TEC, and geophysical data of the Sweden, Finnish, and Russian high-latitude observatories. A local substorm that occurred from 1451 to 1655 UT has been studied in detail, and 52 OIB ionograms have been obtained. The types of reflections from the MIT polar wall and the narrow ionization trough have been identified.