Geoelectricity: atmospheric charging and thunderstorms

✍ Scribed by Wolfgang Kundt; Gernot Thuma

• Book ID: 104407927
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 184 KB
• Volume: 61
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1364-6826
• DOI: 10.1016/s1364-6826(99)00061-9

✦ Synopsis

The ``classical picture of the global circuit'' Ð i.e. of atmospheric charging by thunderstorm clouds Ð is shown to be inconsistent. Thunderstorm overall voltages fEdz are (only) of order MV, slightly above fairweather voltages, insucient to charge the geocapacitor'. Instead of charging the ionosphere (via Wilson currents), thunderstorms occasionally discharge towards it, with emitted spectra ranging from the visible up to gamma-ray energies. Fairweather charging takes place, so we claim, via the negative drizzle of the heavy' aerosols, of radii between 0.1 mm and 0.1 mm in the troposphere.