Authors: B. Strelnikov, F.-J. Lübken, R. Latteck, I. Strelnikova, H. Asmus, T. Staszak, T. Renkwitz, J. L. Chau, M. Friedrich, and M. Rapp

The PMWE (Polar Mesosphere Winter Echoes) research project initiated by the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) in partnership with the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (LMU) involving collaboration between several international and national partners will launch a total of four instrumented sounding rockets from the Andøya Space Center distributed over two campaigns in 2017 and 2018.

PMWE are relatively strong coherent radar returns from ∼55–85 km altitudes, which primarily occur in the winter season at high latitudes. PMWE are also observed at mid-latitudes, although very much more rarely. Because of their extremely low occurrence rate, they are still poorly investigated. As a consequence, the origin of these echoes is still under debate.

Currently most acceptable explanations of PMWE formation mechanism suggest that the key role plays neutral air turbulence. However, there are some features, which need additional players to explain this phenomenon. The most important among them is the background electron density which is needed to make PMWE detectable for the radars. This explains why PMWE more often occur during day time when the solar radiation ionizes the Earth’s atmosphere. Another important player in the formation of PMWE is suggested to be the dust particles or the so-called Meteor Smoke Particles (MSP). Their importance was suggested by interpretation of the PMWE observations with the European Incoherent Scatter radar (EISCAT).

In the paper we give a short review on the existing data related to PMWE and their scientific interpretations. We also introduce the experimental approach of the ongoing PMWE sounding rocket project.