Ionospheric Elves Powered by Corona Discharges in Overshooting Thunderclouds
Abstract Corona discharges in thundercloud tops are observed by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) as blue flashes at the 337 nm spectral line of N 2 and by ground receivers as so‐called Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs) in the radio signals. It has been suggested that the electromagnetic radiation from the discharges may be powerful enough to excite elves, the rapidly expanding rings of luminous emissions at the bottom ionosphere. Here we present optical observations by ASIM and simultaneous radio measurements by lightning receivers in China, that confirm this proposition. The concurrent measurements suggest that corona discharges at cloud tops generate elves observable by ASIM when the peak current exceeds ∼140 kA in absolute value, as estimated from the NBE measurements. The appearance of elves offers an alternate method to estimate the corona discharge currents and alignments at cloud tops, relevant to the characterization of chemical perturbations to greenhouse gas agents at the tropical tropopause.
Authors
- Ningyu Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8626-6218)
- Dongshuai Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9858-3042)
- Fanchao Lyu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8335-7480)
- Nikolai Østgaard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2572-7033)
- Olivier Chanrion (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4484-4104)
- Zilong Qin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7499-355X)
- Baoyou Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2993-1581)
- Christoph Köhn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-5889)
- Gaopeng Lu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4523-0144)
- V. Reglero (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0437-5286)
- Torsten Neubert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7851-7788)
- Krystallia Dimitriadou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3762-9211)
- Ming Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5651-003X)
- Feifan Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4115-4770)
- Jiuhou Lei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4374-5083)
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- China Meteorological Administration (CN)
- Universitat de València (ES)
- University of New Hampshire (US)
- Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science (CN)
- Astronomy and Space (AU)
- University of Bergen (NO)
- Technical University of Denmark (DK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Published
- 2025-03-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2024gl114090
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Lightning and Electromagnetic Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.15
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China