Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yamada, T
• Sato, T O
• Adachi, T
• Winkler, H
• Kuribayashi, K
• Larsson, R
• Yoshida, N
• Takahashi, Y
• Sato, M
• Chen, A B
• Hsu, R R
• Nakano, Y
• Fujinawa, T
• Nara, S
• Uchiyama, Y
• Kasai, Y

Titel

HO2 Generation Above Sprite‐Producing Thunderstorms Derived from Low‐Noise SMILES Observation Spectra

Ist Teil von

• Geophysical research letters, 2020-02, Vol.47 (3)

Ort / Verlag

Washington: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

Wiley Online Library - AutoHoldings Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• No direct observational evidence of sprite‐produced active radicals has been presented owing to the difficulty of observing a small event area in the nighttime mesosphere, whereas sprite chemical models have indicated that sprite discharge locally affects the atmospheric composition. We present the first observational evidence of a HO2 production above sprite‐producing thunderstorms from the coincidence of temporal‐spatial observations of HO2 spectra, sprite events, and thunderstorms by two space instruments, a submillimeter‐wave limb spectrometer and ultraviolet/visible Imager and a ground‐based very low frequency radiation lightning detection network. A total of three areas was identified with enhanced HO2 levels of approximately 1025 molecules. A chemical sprite model indicates an increase in HO2 in the considered altitude region; however, the predicted production due to a single sprite event is smaller than the observed enhancement. Our observational results suggest that sprites potentially contribute 1% of nighttime background HO2 generation at altitudes of 75–80 km globally.