Mesoscale Lightning in West African Squall Lines and its Global Detection with ELF Measurements
The meteorological context for mesoscale lightning and the origin of ELF Q-bursts in Africa have been enabled by the MIT Doppler radar installed in Niamey, Niger in summer 2006 for the AMMA (African Monsoon and Multidisciplinary Activity). The radar measurements were supplemented with ground-based electrical and video camera observations. A large number of energetic lightning flashes have been documented frequently in the laterally extensive stratiform regions of squall lines that propagate westward in conjunction with African easterly waves. Some of these special flashes developed after the radar bright band was well developed in the stratiform region. GPS clocking of these events has enabled their search and identification at remote ELF stations in Japan, Hungary, Israel and the USA. Preliminary results indicate that these identified flashes have a positive polarity in many cases with a charge moment change (CMC) sometimes ~ 3000 C km sufficient for generating sprites. This expectation has been confirmed by the first ground-based observation of sprites over Africa.
Y. Hobara E. Greenberg N. Nathou B. Russell V. Mushtak E. Williams R. Boldi G. Sátori J. Bór W. Lyons T. Nelson M. Hayakawa C. Price
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, Guadeloupe, France University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA Parsons Laboratory, MIT, Cambridge, MA USA NASA MSFC, Huntsville, Al USA Geodetic and Geophysical Inst., Sopron, Hungary FMA Research, Inc., Ft Collins, CO USA University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan
国际会议
第13届国际大气电学会议(The 13th International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity)
北京
英文
2007-08-13（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）