The global atmospheric electric circuit, solar activity and climate change
By M. Rycroft, S. Israelsson, C. Price. 2000
246 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract The study of the global atmospheric electric circuit has advanced dramatically in the past 50 years. Large advances have been made in the areas of lightning and thunderstorm research, as related to the global circuit. We now have satellites looking down on the Earth continuously, supplying information on the temporal and spatial variability of lightning and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are electric current generators, which drive electric currents up through the conducting atmosphere. They maintain the ionosphere at a potential of ∼+250 kV with respect to the Earth's surface. The global electric circuit is completed by currents ∼2 pA / m 2 flowing through the fair weather atmosphere, remote from thunderstorms, and by transient currents due to negative cloud-to-ground lightning discharges. The time constant of the circuit, ∼>2 min , demonstrates that thunderstorms must occur continually to maintain the fair weather electric field. New discoveries have been made in the field of sprites, elves and blue jets, which may have a direct impact on the global circuit. Our knowledge of the global electric circuit modulated by solar effects has improved. Changes to the global circuit are associated with changes of conductivity linked with the time-varying presence of energetic charged particles, and the solar wind may influence the global electric circuit by inferred effects on cloud microphysics, temperature, and dynamics in the troposphere. We now have a better understanding of how the conductivity of the atmosphere is influenced by aerosols, and how this impacts our measurements of the fair-weather global circuit. The global atmospheric electric circuit is also beginning to be recognised by some climate researchers as a useful tool with which to study and monitor the Earth's changing climate.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Geophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20827d84f3ed636d3b1a86324677816d2347674e
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Citations in the corpus
- The global lightning-induced nitrogen oxides source (2007, background): “Sensitivity of lightning to natural ground radioactivity (Rakov and Uman, 2003), and to cosmic rays and the solar cycle has been also considered (Rycroft et al., 2000; Williams, 2005), but such influences are difficult to detect (Harrison, 2006).”
- Atmospheric electricity coupling between earthquake regions and the ionosphere (2010, background): “The coupling occurs through changes of the downward-directed conduction current density flowing in the global atmospheric electrical circuit in fair weather regions (Rycroft et al. 2000; Rycroft et al., 2007).”
- Recent advances in global electric circuit coupling between the space environment and the troposphere (2012, background): “Each of the ~ 1000 thunderstorms active at any one time generates an upward D.C. (Wilson) current of ~ 1 A to the ionosphere, which is an excellent conductor, at an equipotential V I of ~ + 250 kV with respect to the Earth (e.g. Rycroft et al., 2000, Singh et al 2011).”