Collaborative Research: Balloon Campaign to Quantify Thunderstorm Effects on the Global Electric Circuit

这项拨款将量化雷暴活动作为地球全球电路驱动力的作用。所需的晴天垂直电场和电流密度的测量将在几天内获得。在平流层气球平台上使用久经考验的双朗缪尔探测器技术获得的晴天电场和高空垂直电流密度的时间序列，上述天气，地形和其他影响，将与同期全球雷暴活动的属性进行比较。随着最近的发展和表征的地面全球闪电探测网络，现在有可能检索全球雷暴面积，其不确定性，在一个时间尺度分钟。拟议工作的目标是以前所未有的准确度和深度检验雷暴活动是全球电路的主要驱动力这一假设。智力优点在C. T. R.威尔逊认为，雷暴是全球电路的重要驱动力。实现这一目标将需要对晴天电场的驱动因素进行定量评估。由于长期以来难以测量各种候选者：雷暴，带电云或其他中层大气电流源，这一目标仍然难以实现。此外，关于全球环流对雷暴源变化的短时间响应的观测工作非常有限。这个建议将测试因此连接假设，在时间尺度的顺序100秒。直接比较全球活跃雷暴面积和垂直晴天电流密度的两个时间序列将使这个经典问题取得重大进展。由于高时间分辨率的测量比以前的研究有了很大的进步，这项工作可能会带来关于全球电路的新见解和问题。一个研究生的论文研究将得到支持，作为拟议的努力的结果。此外，还将支持一名本科生参与与每年夏季气球飞行部署相关的分包合同工作。学生将接受仪器开发和校准、现场活动后勤、整理和分析多种类型数据以及建模作为理解测量的手段的培训。这笔赠款将为正在进行的全球电路建模工作提供重要的测量数据，也可能提供见解。我们对雷暴驱动器组件的理解的预期改进对于理解其他全球电路变化（例如太阳风效应，太阳质子事件或大规模大气温度变化）的进展也至关重要。如果全球雷暴活动与平流层垂直电流密度之间的关系如赠款所预期的那样得到确定，这将为利用少量装有仪器的气球监测全球雷暴活动总量的前景开辟可能性。

This grant would quantify the role of thunderstorm activity as a driver of Earth's global electric circuit. The required measurements of the fair weather vertical electric field and current density would be obtained over a period of several days. The time series of the fair weather electric field and vertical current density at high altitude, above weather, orographic, and other influences, obtained by using the well-proven technique of double Langmuir probes on a stratospheric balloon platform would be compared to properties of the contemporaneous global thunderstorm activity. With the recent development and characterization of ground-based global lightning detection networks, it is now possible to retrieve global thunderstorm area, and its uncertainty, on a timescale of minutes. The objective of the proposed work is to test the hypothesis, at unprecedented accuracy and depth, that thunderstorm activity is the primary driver for the global circuit. intellectual merit. Nearly 100 years after C. T. R. Wilson suggested thunderstorms are an important driver of the global electric circuit. Achieving this goal would require a quantitative evaluation of the drivers for the fair weather electric field. This goal has remained elusive due to a long-standing difficulty in measuring the various candidates: thunderstorms, electrified clouds, or other middle atmosphere current sources. Furthermore, there has been only very limited observational work on the short time response of the global circuit to variations in the thunderstorm source. This proposal will test thus connection hypothesis, at times scales of order 100 seconds. A straightforward comparison of the two time series of global active thunderstorm area and vertical fair weather electric current density would enable significant progress on this classic question. Because the high time resolution measurements are a substantial advance over previous investigations, this work will likely lead to new insights and questions about the global electric circuit. A graduate student's dissertation research would be supported as a result of the proposed effort. Moreover, an undergraduate student participating in the sub-contract effort relating to the flight deployment of the balloons each summer would be supported as well.Students will be trained in development and calibration of instrumentation, field campaign logistics, collating and analyzing multiple types of data, and modeling as a means to understand measurements. This grant would provide important measurements, and likely also insights, for ongoing efforts to model the global electric circuit. The anticipated improvement in our understanding of the thunderstorm driver component is also critical to achieving progress on understanding other global electric circuit variations such as from solar wind effects, solar protons events, or large scale atmospheric temperature change. If a robust relation between global thunderstorm activity and stratospheric vertical current density is identified as expected from the grant, this would open the possibility to the prospects of being able to monitor total global thunderstorm activity using a small number of instrumented balloons.