Non-conventional approach to computation of the atmospheric global electric parameters: Resultant data and analysis

Routine measurements of the atmospheric global electric circuit (GEC) using aircraft or balloons are difficult to make. Model studies of thunderstorm evolution in the literature require the difficult task of determining the global thunderstorm frequency to estimate the GEC. Therefore, the study of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Earth System Science Vol. 131; no. 4; p. 247
Main Author Kulkarni, Madhuri N
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Delhi Springer India 30.11.2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Aerosols
Aircraft
Altitude
Balloons
Circuits
Climatic analysis
Climatology
Computation
Cosmic rays
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Mathematical models
Meteorological balloons
Parameters
Precipitation
Principal components analysis
Secular variations
Space Exploration and Astronautics
Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics
Storms
Thunderstorms
Time series
model
data
Atmospheric global electric circuit
principal component analysis
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Summary:Routine measurements of the atmospheric global electric circuit (GEC) using aircraft or balloons are difficult to make. Model studies of thunderstorm evolution in the literature require the difficult task of determining the global thunderstorm frequency to estimate the GEC. Therefore, the study of the secular variations of the GEC has remained as a long-standing problem for carrying out multi-disciplinary studies. Further complications arise in estimating the GEC current from a particular source as the sources of the same type (e.g., thunderstorm) differ in their individual current contribution. The new model developed here overcomes these difficulties by computing the global electric parameters directly without summing up current contributions of different sources. A large monthly dataset of the GEC parameters is generated and analysed to explore the GEC source characteristics and their contribution on different time scales using the principal component analysis. The seasonal climatology of the calculated ionospheric potential during the period 1980–2009 shows qualitative consistency with the previous aircraft measurements in the literature. The results show a decreasing trend of the GEC during the period of study (1996–2009) is attributed to the decreasing intensity of thunderstorm source.
ISSN:0973-774X
0253-4126
0973-774X
DOI:10.1007/s12040-022-01981-3