ISUAL far-ultraviolet events, elves, and lightning current

Autor: Rue-Rou Hsu, Yukihiro Takahashi, Shu Chun Chang, L. J. Lee, Lou-Chuang Lee, Han Tzong Su, StephenB. Mende, HaraldU. Frey, AlfredB. Chen, Cheng Ling Kuo
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. 115
ISSN: 0148-0227
Popis: [1] The Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightnings (ISUAL) often recorded events that have significant far-ultraviolet (FUV) emissions in the spectrophotometer but have no discernible transient luminous events (TLEs) in the imager. These FUV events likely are dim TLEs. To confirm the conjecture, lightning emissions were simulated and proved to be completely absorbed by the atmosphere. The FUV emission of the FUV events follows the lightning OI emission within 1 ms, similar to the characteristics of elves. After analyzing the imager-N21P brightness of the elves and their FUV intensity, a linear correlation was found, which is consistent with the work of Kuo et al. (2007). The intensity of the FUV events ranks among the dimmest elves and is less than 1 × 104 photons/cm2. Combining all the information, the FUV events are identified as dim elves that eluded the detection of the ISUAL imager. Also from the detection limits of the ISUAL spectrophotometer (SP) and the imager, for the before-the-limb elves the detection number of SP is found to be nearly 16 times higher than that of the imager. This result is consistent with a related factor of ∼13 that was inferred from the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) peak current distribution for the negative cloud-to-ground lightning. Hence the ISUAL spectrophotometer can be used to perform elve survey, to infer the peak current of the elve-producing lightning, and possibly to be used to deduce other lightning parameters. Evidence is also found for the existence of multielves, which are FUV events from the M-components or the multiple strokes in lightning flashes.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz: