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Global Electric Circuit Implications of Total Current Measurements over Electrified CloudsWe determined total conduction (Wilson) currents and flash rates for 850 overflights of electrified clouds spanning regions including the Southeastern United States, the Western Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, Central America and adjacent oceans, Central Brazil, and the South Pacific. The overflights include storms over land and ocean, with and without lightning, and with positive and negative Wilson currents. We combined these individual storm overflight statistics with global diurnal lightning variation data from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) and Optical Transient Detector (OTD) to estimate the thunderstorm and electrified shower cloud contributions to the diurnal variation in the global electric circuit. The contributions to the global electric circuit from lightning producing clouds are estimated by taking the mean current per flash derived from the overflight data for land and ocean overflights and combining it with the global lightning rates (for land and ocean) and their diurnal variation derived from the LIS/OTD data. We estimate the contribution of non-lightning producing electrified clouds by assuming several different diurnal variations and total non-electrified storm counts to produce estimates of the total storm currents (lightning and non-lightning producing storms). The storm counts and diurnal variations are constrained so that the resultant total current diurnal variation equals the diurnal variation in the fair weather electric field (+/-15%). These assumptions, combined with the airborne and satellite data, suggest that the total mean current in the global electric circuit ranges from 2.0 to 2.7 kA, which is greater than estimates made by others using other methods.
Document ID
20100002099
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Mach, Douglas M.
(Alabama Univ. Huntsville, AL, United States)
Blakeslee, Richard J.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Bateman, Monte G.
(Universities Space Research Association Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 14, 2009
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Report/Patent Number
M09-0790
Meeting Information
Meeting: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2009 Fall Meeting
Location: San Francisco, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: December 14, 2009
End Date: December 18, 2009
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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