Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude

I. Bjørge-Engeland; N. Østgaard; D. Sarria; M. Marisaldi; A. Mezentsev; A. Fuglestad; N. Lehtinen; J. E. Grove; D. Shy; T. Lang; M. Quick; H. Christian; C. Schultz; R. Blakeslee; I. Adams; R. Kroodsma; G. Heymsfield; K. Ullaland; S. Yang; B. Hasan Qureshi; J. Søndergaard; B. Husa; D. Walker; M. Bateman; D. Mach; P. Bitzer; M. Fullekrug; M. Cohen; M. Stanley; S. Cummer; J. Montanya; M. Pazos; C. Velosa; O. van der Velde; Y. Pu; P. Krehbiel; J. A. Roncancio; J. A. Lopez; M. Urbani; A. Santos; T. Neubert; F. Gordillo-Vazquez

doi:10.1029/2024GL110395

Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude

I. Bjørge-Engeland, N. Østgaard, D. Sarria, M. Marisaldi, A. Mezentsev, A. Fuglestad, N. Lehtinen, J. E. Grove, D. Shy, T. Lang, M. Quick, H. Christian, C. Schultz, R. Blakeslee, I. Adams, R. Kroodsma, G. Heymsfield, K. Ullaland, S. Yang, B. Hasan QureshiJ. Søndergaard, B. Husa, D. Walker, M. Bateman, D. Mach, P. Bitzer, M. Fullekrug, M. Cohen, M. Stanley, S. Cummer, J. Montanya, M. Pazos, C. Velosa, O. van der Velde, Y. Pu, P. Krehbiel, J. A. Roncancio, J. A. Lopez, M. Urbani, A. Santos, T. Neubert, F. Gordillo-Vazquez

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are ten-to-hundreds of microsecond bursts of gamma-rays produced when electrons in strong electric fields in thunderclouds are accelerated to relativistic energies. Space instruments have observed TGFs with source photon brightness down to ∼10¹⁷–10¹⁶. Based on space and aircraft observations, TGFs have been considered rare phenomena produced in association with very few lightning discharges. Space observations associated with lightning ground observations in the radio band have indicated that there exists a population of dimmer TGFs. Here we show observations of TGFs from aircraft altitude that were not detected by a space instrument viewing the same area. The TGFs were found through Monte Carlo modeling to be associated with 10¹⁵–10¹² photons at source, which is several orders of magnitude below what can be seen from space. Our results suggest that there exists a significant population of TGFs that are too weak to be observed from space.

Original language	English
Article number	e2024GL110395
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	51
Issue number	17
Early online date	7 Sept 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110395
Publication status	Published - 16 Sept 2024

Data Availability Statement

This work made use of data from UIB-BGO, iSTORM, FEGS, EFCM, LF and VHF, GLD360.

The authors wish to thank VAISALA for the GLD360 lightning data.

The data used in this study are available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12636189 (Bjørge‐Engeland, 2024)

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank VAISALA for the GLD360 lightning data.

Funding

The ALOFT campaign and the UIB-BGO instrument were supported by European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 320839 and the Research Council of Norway under contracts 223252/F50 (CoE) and contract 325582. Work at NRL on ALOFT is supported by the Office of Naval Research 6.1 funds. In addition, D. Shy is supported by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Jerome and Isabella Karle Fellowship. The FEGS and EFCM team acknowledge the work of Scott Podgorny, David Corredor, and Mike Stewart. S. Cummer and Y. Pu were partly supported by the National Science Foundation Dynamic and Physical Meteorology program through Grant AGS-2026304. The participation of J.A.R, J.L., M.U., O.vdV. and J.M. and the fielding of instruments on San Andrés island was supported by projects EQC2021-006957-P and PID2022-136348NB-C33 by the government of Spain (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Regional Development Fund “ERDF - A way of making Europe” by the European Union. The use of the VHF data was supported by US NSF Grants 1720600 and 2214044. M.F. was sponsored by the Royal Society (UK) grant NMG/R1/180252 and the Natural Environment Research Council (UK) under grants NE/L012669/1 and NE/H024921/1. Significant financial and logistical support for ALOFT was provided by the NASA Earth Science Division. We thank the governments of Mexico, Bahamas, Colombia, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands for approving ER-2 overflights in support of ALOFT. GOES MDS sectors in support of ALOFT were enabled by NOAA. We want to thank the ER-2 Project Team at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, and the MacDill Air Force Base for hosting. The simulations were performed on resources provided by UNINETT Sigma2 - the National Infrastructure for High Performance Computing and Data Storage in Norway, under project no. NN9526 K. Francisco J. Gordillo-Vázquez was supported by project PID2022-136348NB-C31 funded by MCIN/AEI.

Keywords

aircraft campaign
ALOFT
ASIM
lightning
terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Geophysics
General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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10.1029/2024GL110395Licence: CC BY

Cite this

Bjørge-Engeland, I., Østgaard, N., Sarria, D., Marisaldi, M., Mezentsev, A., Fuglestad, A., Lehtinen, N., Grove, J. E., Shy, D., Lang, T., Quick, M., Christian, H., Schultz, C., Blakeslee, R., Adams, I., Kroodsma, R., Heymsfield, G., Ullaland, K., Yang, S., ... Gordillo-Vazquez, F. (2024). Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude. Geophysical Research Letters, 51(17), Article e2024GL110395. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110395

Bjørge-Engeland, I, Østgaard, N, Sarria, D, Marisaldi, M, Mezentsev, A, Fuglestad, A, Lehtinen, N, Grove, JE, Shy, D, Lang, T, Quick, M, Christian, H, Schultz, C, Blakeslee, R, Adams, I, Kroodsma, R, Heymsfield, G, Ullaland, K, Yang, S, Qureshi, BH, Søndergaard, J, Husa, B, Walker, D, Bateman, M, Mach, D, Bitzer, P, Fullekrug, M, Cohen, M, Stanley, M, Cummer, S, Montanya, J, Pazos, M, Velosa, C, van der Velde, O, Pu, Y, Krehbiel, P, Roncancio, JA, Lopez, JA, Urbani, M, Santos, A, Neubert, T & Gordillo-Vazquez, F 2024, 'Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude', Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 51, no. 17, e2024GL110395. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110395

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title = "Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude",

abstract = "Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are ten-to-hundreds of microsecond bursts of gamma-rays produced when electrons in strong electric fields in thunderclouds are accelerated to relativistic energies. Space instruments have observed TGFs with source photon brightness down to ∼1017–1016. Based on space and aircraft observations, TGFs have been considered rare phenomena produced in association with very few lightning discharges. Space observations associated with lightning ground observations in the radio band have indicated that there exists a population of dimmer TGFs. Here we show observations of TGFs from aircraft altitude that were not detected by a space instrument viewing the same area. The TGFs were found through Monte Carlo modeling to be associated with 1015–1012 photons at source, which is several orders of magnitude below what can be seen from space. Our results suggest that there exists a significant population of TGFs that are too weak to be observed from space.",

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author = "I. Bj{\o}rge-Engeland and N. {\O}stgaard and D. Sarria and M. Marisaldi and A. Mezentsev and A. Fuglestad and N. Lehtinen and Grove, {J. E.} and D. Shy and T. Lang and M. Quick and H. Christian and C. Schultz and R. Blakeslee and I. Adams and R. Kroodsma and G. Heymsfield and K. Ullaland and S. Yang and Qureshi, {B. Hasan} and J. S{\o}ndergaard and B. Husa and D. Walker and M. Bateman and D. Mach and P. Bitzer and M. Fullekrug and M. Cohen and M. Stanley and S. Cummer and J. Montanya and M. Pazos and C. Velosa and {van der Velde}, O. and Y. Pu and P. Krehbiel and Roncancio, {J. A.} and Lopez, {J. A.} and M. Urbani and A. Santos and T. Neubert and F. Gordillo-Vazquez",

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AU - Bjørge-Engeland, I.

AU - Østgaard, N.

AU - Sarria, D.

AU - Marisaldi, M.

AU - Mezentsev, A.

AU - Fuglestad, A.

AU - Lehtinen, N.

AU - Grove, J. E.

AU - Shy, D.

AU - Lang, T.

AU - Quick, M.

AU - Christian, H.

AU - Schultz, C.

AU - Blakeslee, R.

AU - Adams, I.

AU - Kroodsma, R.

AU - Heymsfield, G.

AU - Ullaland, K.

AU - Yang, S.

AU - Qureshi, B. Hasan

AU - Søndergaard, J.

AU - Husa, B.

AU - Walker, D.

AU - Bateman, M.

AU - Mach, D.

AU - Bitzer, P.

AU - Fullekrug, M.

AU - Cohen, M.

AU - Stanley, M.

AU - Cummer, S.

AU - Montanya, J.

AU - Pazos, M.

AU - Velosa, C.

AU - van der Velde, O.

AU - Pu, Y.

AU - Krehbiel, P.

AU - Roncancio, J. A.

AU - Lopez, J. A.

AU - Urbani, M.

AU - Santos, A.

AU - Neubert, T.

AU - Gordillo-Vazquez, F.

PY - 2024/9/16

Y1 - 2024/9/16

N2 - Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are ten-to-hundreds of microsecond bursts of gamma-rays produced when electrons in strong electric fields in thunderclouds are accelerated to relativistic energies. Space instruments have observed TGFs with source photon brightness down to ∼1017–1016. Based on space and aircraft observations, TGFs have been considered rare phenomena produced in association with very few lightning discharges. Space observations associated with lightning ground observations in the radio band have indicated that there exists a population of dimmer TGFs. Here we show observations of TGFs from aircraft altitude that were not detected by a space instrument viewing the same area. The TGFs were found through Monte Carlo modeling to be associated with 1015–1012 photons at source, which is several orders of magnitude below what can be seen from space. Our results suggest that there exists a significant population of TGFs that are too weak to be observed from space.

AB - Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are ten-to-hundreds of microsecond bursts of gamma-rays produced when electrons in strong electric fields in thunderclouds are accelerated to relativistic energies. Space instruments have observed TGFs with source photon brightness down to ∼1017–1016. Based on space and aircraft observations, TGFs have been considered rare phenomena produced in association with very few lightning discharges. Space observations associated with lightning ground observations in the radio band have indicated that there exists a population of dimmer TGFs. Here we show observations of TGFs from aircraft altitude that were not detected by a space instrument viewing the same area. The TGFs were found through Monte Carlo modeling to be associated with 1015–1012 photons at source, which is several orders of magnitude below what can be seen from space. Our results suggest that there exists a significant population of TGFs that are too weak to be observed from space.

KW - aircraft campaign

KW - ALOFT

KW - ASIM

KW - lightning

KW - terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

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DO - 10.1029/2024GL110395

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85203421709

SN - 0094-8276

VL - 51

JO - Geophysical Research Letters

JF - Geophysical Research Letters

IS - 17

M1 - e2024GL110395

ER -

Evidence of a New Population of Weak Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes Observed From Aircraft Altitude

Abstract

Data Availability Statement

Acknowledgements

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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