Statistical properties of backscatter from the Longyearbyen SuperDARN radar

The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) has been a useful tool to study the mid-latitude and high-latitude ionospheres for more than 20 years. The new SuperDARN radar on Svalbard (LYR) began operating in October 2016. This thesis presents the first statistical analysis of the backscatter detected by this radar over a full calendar year. It is found that the LYR SuperDARN radar routinely detects backscatter from the E- and F- ionospheric layers, and also from the D-layer during periods of high-energy particle precipitation. Strong seasonal variations in backscatter occurrence are observed. In the F-layer, the echo occurrence reaches a maximum in the winter and a minimum in the summer. In contrast, the E-layer echo occurrence is greatest in the summer and lowest in the winter. In addition to the echo occurrence, the average behaviour of the velocity and spectral width parameters measured by the radar are investigated. A key feature of the data is cusp signatures for the summer months, which are identified by enhanced spectral widths. In the winter, high spectral widths and high velocities are measured within the entire dayside auroral oval between 6--\SI{18}{MLT}. Ionospheric convection patterns for the dayside sector are found to have a seasonal behaviour and a strong dependence on the $B_y$ and $B_z$ components of the interplanetary magnetic field. Finally, preliminary evidence of polar cap patches detectable with the LYR SuperDARN radar is presented. Polar cap patches are a good scattering target due to their high electron densities and this highlights an opportunity to study the polar ionospheric convection using the Svalbard SuperDARN radar