Height Determination of a Blue Discharge Observed by ASIM/MMIA on the International Space Station

Abstract

<div> <div> <div> <p>Recently, Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) in the mesosphere and lightning activity near thunderstorm tops have attracted great interest. The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) and the Modular Multispectral Imaging Array (MMIA) are on board the International Space Station (ISS) to record the lightning activity and TLEs in the UV band (180-230 nm) as well as the blue (337 nm) and the red (777.4 nm) emissions (Chanrion et al. [2019], Neubert et al. [2019]). Blue luminous events recorded by ASIM during the nighttime were first reported by Soler et al. [2021].</p> <p>During 23:00-23:05 UTC on 3rd, February 2019, 188 MMIA triggers were recorded and more than 2000 lightning strokes were reported by the lightning detection and location network. We focus on a blue discharge event that happened at 23:02:41 UTC, which was caused by a negative narrow bipolar event (NBE) with no red and UV photomultiplier tube (PMT) pulses associated with it. The novelty of this work is that the height determination is carried out by using the ground-based electric field measurements and the space-based optical measurements from ASIM. The low-frequency electric field receiver was set up in Carnarvon, 30.97° S, 21.98° E, South Africa. The blue discharge height (15.83-18.67 km), calculated using the electric field measurements, is derived from the skywaves arrival times with a spherical Earth model. The ionospheric height calculated by this model (93.89 km) is consistent with that determined by the averaged cloud to ground discharges waveforms (93.68 km). The rising edge of the blue optical emission is analyzed to do the altitude estimation (14.3-15.8 km). The cloud top height is calculated as a reference (15.75-16.65 km), which is inferred from radiometric measurements, typically at a wavelength around 10 μm. The height of NBEs is important to help to understand the chemistry effects at the tropopause level caused by such events.</p> <p>In the future, this data set would be used to study other properties of many events such as blue events and red events.</p> <p> </p> <p>References</p> <p>Chanrion, O., Neubert, T., Lundgaard Rasmussen, I. <em>et al.</em> The Modular Multispectral Imaging Array (MMIA) of the ASIM Payload on the International Space Station. <em>Space Sci Rev</em> 215, 28 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-019-0593-y</p> <p>Neubert, T., Østgaard, N., Reglero, V. <em>et al.</em> The ASIM Mission on the International Space Station. <em>Space Sci Rev</em> 215, 26 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-019-0592-z</p> </div> </div> </div><div> <div> <div> <p><span>Soler, S.</span>, <span>Gordillo-Vázquez, F. J.</span>, <span>Pérez-Invernón, F. J.</span>, <span>Luque, A.</span>, <span>Li, D.</span>, <span>Neubert, T.</span>, et al. (<span>2021</span>). <span>Global frequency and geographical distribution of nighttime streamer corona discharges (BLUEs) in thunderclouds</span>. <em>Geophysical Research Letters</em>, <span>48</span>, e2021GL094657. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL094657</p> </div> </div> </div>

Observation of Blue Corona Discharges and Cloud Microphysics in the Top of Thunderstorm Cells in Cyclone Fani

“…There is a growing number of studies of blue corona discharges based on ASIM measurements (Bai et al., 2023; Dimitriadou et al., 2022; Husbjerg et al., 2022; Li et al., 2021, 2022b; F. Liu et al., 2021a; Soler et al., 2020, 2021). On a global scale, they are estimated to occur at a rate of about 11 s −1 at local midnight (Soler et al., 2021) and up to 0.1 km −2 night −1 (Husbjerg et al., 2022).…”