The Poker Flat, Alaska, MST radar as a meteor radar

Meteor echoes received on the mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere radar at Poker Flat, Alaska, have been tested for their usefulness in studying the large-scale dynamics of the upper mesosphere and lower ionosphere. A selection scheme has been developed to extract meteor echoes from the normally observed turbulence scatter echoes in a composite data set. The selected echoes have height and time distributions that agree with the expected meteor distributions. Wind velocities calculated from the meteor echoes agree well with those calculated from the turbulent scatter echoes.