An Overview of Thunderstorm-Related Research on the Atmospheric Electric Field, Schumann Resonances, Sprites, and the Ionosphere at Sopron, Hungary

ELF Electromagnetic Waves from Lightning: The Schumann Resonances

“…A 10 minute interval was used in the first successful experiment [7,8]. While SR observations have been ongoing for many years in Hungary [59], USA [26], Japan [60], and Israel [54], recently new observatories have been opened in Poland [61], India [62], China [63,64], Greece [65] and Spain [66].…”

Lightning and middle atmospheric discharges in the atmosphere

“…Global thunderstorm/lightning activity with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) perspective reported more lightning activity in the warm EL Niño phase as compared to the cool La Niña phase (Satori andZieger, 1998, 1999;Price et al, 1998;Chronis et al, 2008;Goodman et al, 2000;Hamid et al, 2001;Sátori et al, 2009a;Kulkarni and Siingh, 2014). Sátori et al (2009a) reported moderate relative increase of lightning activity in the longitudinal range of Africa and Europe, more pronounced in the coastal regions of North West Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean than the equatorial Africa.…”

“…The long term SR data collected at different stations clearly show diurnal, seasonal and inter-annual variation of SR parameters (Satori et al, 1996(Satori et al, , 2003(Satori et al, , 2009b(Satori et al, , 2013Price and Melnikov, 2004;Sekiguchi et al, 2008), which have been used to remotely sense the global lightning activity, global climate variation and variability of the lower ionosphere (Williams, 1992;Yang et al, 2009;Satori et al, 2013;Williams and Mareev, 2014). Global distribution of lightning activity is obtained using global inversion technique for the Schumann resonance data collected at either a single station/multiple stations (Williams, 1992;Satori et al, 1996;2009bHobara et al, 2006;Williams et al, 2010;Shvets et al, 2010;Shvets and Hayakawa, 2011;Yamashita et al, 2011;Mushtak and Williams, 2011;Williams and Mareev, 2014).…”

“…Global distribution of lightning activity is obtained using global inversion technique for the Schumann resonance data collected at either a single station/multiple stations (Williams, 1992;Satori et al, 1996;2009bHobara et al, 2006;Williams et al, 2010;Shvets et al, 2010;Shvets and Hayakawa, 2011;Yamashita et al, 2011;Mushtak and Williams, 2011;Williams and Mareev, 2014). The diurnal variation of the cumulative intensity of the first three Schumann resonant signals observed at Nagycenk, Hungary for the Years 1994-1998 clearly showed peaks at 0700-0900 UT, 1400-1600 UT and 1900-2100 UT (Satori et al, 2009b(Satori et al, , 2013 corresponding to intense tropical thunderstorm activity over South East Asia, Africa and South America. These results are very similar to the diurnal variations obtained from optical measurements from space (Christian et al, 2003).…”

“…The diurnal variation of the mean SR intensity of the first, second and third modes have been used to study the shift in the global position of the lightning activity in the warm El Niño years and cool La Niña years (Satori andZieger, 1998, 1999;Sátori et al, 2009aSátori et al, , 2009b. Using the annual diurnal variation of SR intensities observed at Rhode Island, USA, and Nagycenk, Hungary along with observations of lightning from space, Williams and Satori (2004) reported that lightning activity in the African zone dominates over that in the South America and that electrified rain/shower clouds are more numerous in the South America than in the Africa, an important result in the context of global electric circuit studies.…”