TY - JOUR
T1 - Analysis of lightning strokes associated with sprites observed by ISUAL in the vicinity of North America
AU - Lu, Gaopeng
AU - Cummer, Steven A.
AU - Chen, Alfred B.
AU - Lyu, Fanchao
AU - Li, Dongshuai
AU - Liu, Fei
AU - Hsu, Rue Ron
AU - Su, Han Tzong
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would thank Dr. Earle Williams and another anonymous reviewer for providing valuable comments on the paper. This work was supported jointly by National Key Basic Research and Development Program (2014CB441405), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.41574179), Open Research Program of Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster (Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology) of Ministry of Education (KLME1414), "The Hundred Talents Program" of Chinese Academy of Sciences (2013068), and Physical and Dynamic Meteorology Program of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF). The authors appreciate the contribution of Dr. Simon Huang, a previous PhD student in the National Cheng Kung University, at the very beginning of this work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Terrestrial, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (TAO). All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/8
Y1 - 2017/8
N2 - We examined the broadband (<1 Hz to 30 kHz) lightning sferics associated with 395 sprites observed near North America by the Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL) onboard the FORMOSAT-2 satellite in a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015. Our analysis indicates that the ISUAL dataset contains a significant fraction (69, or ~18%) of negative sprites, which were predominantly (>80%) observed over oceanic and coastal thunderstorms mostly in tropical areas. The mean and median of impulse charge moment change (iCMC) associated with positive (negative) sprites are +346 C km (-709 C km) and +280 C km (-649 C km), respectively. The morphology and parent lightning properties (e.g., typically with high peak currents >-80 kA and large iCMCs >-300 C km) of negative sprites observed by the ISUAL are generally consistent with that documented in ground-based observations, but the ISUAL dataset does imply that sprites are sometimes produced by negative strokes with sub-critical iCMCs (less than -300 C km). Consequently, the future survey of global occurrence of sprites is desired to be based on complementary ground and space-borne observations.
AB - We examined the broadband (<1 Hz to 30 kHz) lightning sferics associated with 395 sprites observed near North America by the Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL) onboard the FORMOSAT-2 satellite in a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015. Our analysis indicates that the ISUAL dataset contains a significant fraction (69, or ~18%) of negative sprites, which were predominantly (>80%) observed over oceanic and coastal thunderstorms mostly in tropical areas. The mean and median of impulse charge moment change (iCMC) associated with positive (negative) sprites are +346 C km (-709 C km) and +280 C km (-649 C km), respectively. The morphology and parent lightning properties (e.g., typically with high peak currents >-80 kA and large iCMCs >-300 C km) of negative sprites observed by the ISUAL are generally consistent with that documented in ground-based observations, but the ISUAL dataset does imply that sprites are sometimes produced by negative strokes with sub-critical iCMCs (less than -300 C km). Consequently, the future survey of global occurrence of sprites is desired to be based on complementary ground and space-borne observations.
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U2 - 10.3319/TAO.2017.03.31.01
DO - 10.3319/TAO.2017.03.31.01
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85027489406
VL - 28
JO - Terrestrial, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
JF - Terrestrial, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
SN - 1017-0839
IS - 4
ER -