| 13 Jul 2026
Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar – Novel Atmospheric Sounding (SAAMER-NOVA): a new multistatic meteor radar network for large and small-scale atmospheric wave studies above Tierra del Fuego and Quasi-two-Day-Wave case study
Abstract. The Southern Argentina Agile MEteor Radar – Novel Atmospheric Sounding (SAAMER-NOVA) is the newest meteor radar network, an advancement to the SAAMER project, which has been operational since May 2008. The SAAMER-NOVA became fully operational in October 2025, using a monostatic meteor radar situated at Rio Grande (67.8° W, 53.8° S), alongside two passive receiver systems near the town of Tolhuin (67.1° W, 54.5° S) and the border crossing Radman (68.6° W, 54.0° S), south and west of Rio Grande, respectively. These remote receiver stations form an almost perfect rectangular triangle, which optimises measurement response, and the angular diversity permits analysis of small-scale divergent and vortical structures. This network successfully provides measurements with a default 15–30 min temporal resolution in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT). Daily meteor echoes detected at SAAMER-NOVA are approximately 20,639, with the highest counts at Tolhuin, followed by Radman and then Rio Grande. This extensive meteor detection permits the retrieval of spatially resolved, high-resolution three-dimensional wind fields from this network using sophisticated retrieval models such as 3DVAR+DIV, VVP, and SVVP. In this paper, we describe the statistics and cross-site validation of SAAMER-NOVA wind products spanning from October 2025 to January 2026 and 1st – 31st January 2026, respectively. We present snapshots of tomographic wind reconstructions retrieved from 3DVAR+DIV, Altitude-Time Wind (ATW) profiles, and zonal and meridional keograms of latitudinal and longitudinal cross-sections. The ATW Figures reveal diurnal variations and several wave activities across the region. The motivation for deploying the SAAMER-NOVA network at the southern tip of Argentina is to expand and enhance atmospheric measurements in a region recognised as a hotspot for atmospheric gravity wave (GW) activity. This strategic positioning at the southern tip of the Andes enables unique, advanced observations of MLT dynamics and the first imaging meteor radar network in Tierra del Fuego. The new SAAMER-NOVA capabilities provide a pathway to benchmark existing circulation models for small-scale GW dynamics over one of the world’s most significant GW source regions and to guide investigations into the multistep vertical coupling between atmospheric layers.
This manuscript reports a newly established multi-static meteor radar in souther Argentina. The analysis follows the authors' work on other systems. The results are robust and informative. The figures are also well prepared. The analysis of keograms showing the horizontal structure of some waves are noval and provides new information on the spatial structure of the waves.
There are a few minor technical details to be corrected before this manuscript ready to be published. They are listed below.
Line 132: Argentina time is UTC-3. 8-12 UT is 5am-9am, which is early morning, not ‘afternoon hours.’ Same error for the ‘midnight’ and ‘evening hours.’
Line 193: explain what ‘customized normalization’ mean.
Figures 7, 9, 10: The two black lines are hardly visible. Consider using other color or other ways to indicate this period of interest.
Figure 8: The vertical white lines are not explained in the caption.
Figure 10, 11: For plots that zoomed-in to 3 days, several tick marks of the x-axis have the same labels (of the same day). This is not informative. Please use date plus UT hours for each tick mark to differentiate them.