UK EISCAT Time Allocations
Introduction
Each EISCAT country is assigned a certain amount of time on the EISCAT Mainland and Svalbard Radars. (This amount depends on their financial contribution to EISCAT.) There are separate allocations for Mainland and Svalbard use, with the Mainland allocation covering the two Mainland Radars and the Heater. It is up to each country to decide how this time should be utilised. Within the UK, time is awarded by the NERC Atmospheric Radar Facilities Sub-Committee (NARFSC) for a particular experiment. Unless NARFSC stipulates otherwise, the use of this time is not limited to any particular year or to part of any year. There is also normally no date by which the time must be used - although any experiment for which time remains unused for a period of two years will be closed (see note at foot of page), unless an application for additional time or a case for retention is approved by NARFSC. Otherwise, the time normally remains available until it is exhausted or becomes insufficient, when an application can be made for additional time. The time which remains available - or time balance - for each experiment will therefore vary. Records are kept of these time balances and also of the time which a particular experiment has used. The details are provided below,but it is first necessary to discuss briefly the manner by which EISCAT time is accounted.
EISCAT Accounting Time
The use of the various EISCAT facilities is charged at different rates, and usage of these facilities is measured in what is termed accounting time. This is the sum of the actual time which elapsed during those periods when the experiment was running, multiplied by the rate - or charging factor - for the facility or facilities which the experiment employed. Thus:
Accounting Time = Actual Time x Charging Factor
For example: the use of the Mainland UHF Radar alone in Monostatic Mode attracts a charging factor of 1.0, so that, in this case, the accounting time is equal to the actual time used by the experiment. If, however, the UHF Radar is used in Tristatic Mode, the charging factor rises to 1.5; if, however, this Radar is used Monostatically in conjunction together with the Mainland VHF Radar, this factor will be 2.0. In both of these latter cases, the accounting time is no longer the same as the actual time.
This is an important point as the figures for time allocations, time balances, and the time used, are given in accounting time. The time balance may not therefore represent the actual time which is available.
Time Used and Remaining for UK Experiments
EISCAT account Mainland usage separately from that on Svalbard, and separate lists are therefore maintained for Mainland and Svalbard experiments. Tables of the time used and remaining for each experiment can be found in one of the following:-
In both lists, the figures provided are of accounting time.These tables also contain the names of the principal experimenters and research groups involved with each experiment, and the month and the year when the experiment was last run.
NB: A Current Experiment is one for which a time balance is maintained. There are also many experiments which have been "closed" - that is: their time balances have been set to zero. For each of these experiments, a figure of the time used only is kept. A list of recently closed experiments can be found in a table of Experiments Closed in 2009. One should note that the closure of an experiment under the "two year" rule described above does not preclude an application for further time for that experiment at some future date.