<p>&#160;&#160;It is not new knowledge that whistler are always present in the ionosphere during the thunderstorms. The terrestrial ionosphere is mainly a plasma region which is very sensitive for different disturbances. A wide range of plasma instabilities can develop&#160; in this region, which are often nonlinear processes and leading to the development of plasma turbulence.&#160; Turbulence is one of the most universal events phenomena in nature. It plays a crucial role in the dynamics of the space plasma processes. The turbulence appears when some physical parameter exceeds a certain level. It can have place during strong thunderstorms. The ionosphere is sometimes treated as plasma physics laboratory with unique possibility to study fundamental plasma processes. The use of ionospheric satellite&#160; gives the chance to perform insitu measurement of plasma parameters during dynamic processes. For our analysis we used set of selected data &#160;of the electric and magnetic fields variations in ELF and VLF ranges originating from the all French microsatellite DEMETER which was operating on the circular orbit with inclination of about 80<sup>0</sup> at altitude of 660 km from July 2004 until December 2010.</p> <p>The&#160; Fourier, wavelet and bispectral analysis of these signals has been performed. The 3 waves processes has been identified during few very strong strokes. In some cases the nonlinear interactions of whistlers with VLF signals of ground based transmitters. The character of spectra suggests the presence of Richardson&#8217;s cascade. Our conclusion is that these results are related to whistler turbulence.</p>
The question of the connection between solar and thunderstorm activity is not new. The discussion among scientists began before the cosmic era. The correlations of the ground-based registration of the cosmic ray flux and meteorological observations have been performed since the 50s of the 20th century. The discussed problem is related to the influence of cosmic rays on the creation of clouds, particularly thunderstorm clouds. The intensity of the galactic cosmic ray flux is controlled by the density and velocity of the solar wind. The increase in the solar wind flux during high solar activity leads to decreasing galactic cosmic ray flux, but on the other hand, the solar activity creates solar cosmic rays. Using data from the PERUN system and the DEMETER satellite, we tried to estimate the connection between the thunderstorm activity in Poland and solar activity during the period of the DEMETER operational activity (2004–2010). The influence of thunderstorms on the ionosphere and its dependence on solar activity is also discussed. However, due to the short time interval of the available data covering an insignificant part of the solar cycle, close to the minimum activity, our findings are not fully conclusive. No correlation was found between the cosmic ray flux and lightning activity given by the number of the discharges. However, some of the most energetic lightning discharges in the analyzed period occurred close to the minimum of the solar activity and their appearance is discussed.
Tool for the Analysis of Radiations from lightnings and Sprites (TARANIS) is a French Space Agency's (CNES) satellite mission planned for launch in 2020. It is designed for investigating phenomena related to thunderstorm activity, transient luminous events (TLEs) and amongst them -red sprites. The satellite is equipped with cameras, photometers, energetic particles detectors, ion probe and electromagnetic sensors of wide frequency spectrum. It will be the most versatile satellite for measuring TLEs ever sent to space. In this article, theories that are fundamental for understanding sprites and sprites-related measurements of TARANIS mission are presented. The current state of sprites phenomenology and their possible generation mechanisms are presented. The article briefly covers streamer discharges, cloud charge structure at the TLE occurrence, electric breakdown of the air and Runaway Relativistic Electron Avalanche (RREA). At the end, TARANIS mission equipment and goals that are related to presented theories are presented.
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