Sporadic‐E Formation by Wind Shear, Comparison Between Observation and Theory

A comparison is made between observation and theory of simultaneously observed wind shear and electron density in the lower ionosphere. The observation was done by K-8–16 rocket flown from Kagoshima Space Center, Japan. The method of characteristics for time-dependent solution of the equation of continuity, which is a partial differential equation of the first order, was used. The calculation shows a remarkable consistency between the observation and the theory even in details. The result strongly supports the wind-shear theory for sporadic-E formation. The solution suggests that the effective recombination rate is 10−8 cm3 sec−1 as found from other ionospheric observations.