HO 2 Generation Above Sprite‐Producing Thunderstorms Derived from Low‐Noise SMILES Observation Spectra
Abstract 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 pre...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Wiley
2020-02-01
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| Series: | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085529 |
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| Summary: | Abstract 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 HO 2 production above sprite‐producing thunderstorms from the coincidence of temporal‐spatial observations of HO 2 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 HO 2 levels of approximately 10 25 molecules. A chemical sprite model indicates an increase in HO 2 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 HO 2 generation at altitudes of 75–80 km globally. |
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| ISSN: | 0094-8276 1944-8007 |