XXXVI Reunión Bienal de la Real Sociedad Española de Física

Study of transient lightning-driven discharges in the upper atmosphere of the Earth, Venus and giant gaseous planets

19 jul. 2017 15:55

20m

Aula Química Analítica (Facultad de Química (USC))

Oral parallel contribution Plasma Physics Plasma Physics II

Descripción

The electromagnetic field created by terrestrial lightning discharges has a chemical and an electrical impact in the plasma existent in the upper atmosphere, producing Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). Since their discover in year 1989, terrestrial TLEs have been investigated in an effort to determine their chemical impact in the upper mesosphere. In addition, the detection of possible extraterrestrial TLEs have been proposed as a tool to study lightning beyond our planet. Difficulties inherent in the study and observation of the natural plasma located in the lower ionosphere give value to the development of models. We extend previous models of the impact of quasi-electrostatic field (QE) in the terrestrial mesosphere produced by cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning discharges, providing the community with new tools to interpret observations from spacecraft. In addition, we use a Finite Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) model to investigate possible TLEs existence in the atmosphere of giant planets caused by lightning-emitted electromagnetic pulses (EMP). Finally, we apply these models to the case of Venus to investigate the mesospheric optical signature produced by hypothetical Venusian intra-cloud (IC) lightning, proposing an indirect method to determine the existence of lightning discharges in Venus from the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki, orbiting Venus since December 2015.

Materiales de la presentación

Slides

Perez_Invernon.pdf