A new South American network to study the atmospheric electric field and its variations related to geophysical phenomena

Global Electric Circuit research at Graciosa Island (ENA-ARM facility): First year of measurements and ENSO influences

“…In terms of global effects, the PG values tend to increase or decrease as a result from an addition or reduction in the charging of the GEC, respectively, by the generators, mainly lightning. Although the present results do not show a clear seasonality of GEC, the work of Tacza and co-authors [12] give support to the present findings. The authors presented a three-year analysis of PG data in South America stations, observing that the average daily shape during a month, season or year repeats similarly for different years.…”

“…2. It should be mentioned that results discussed in this section are unrepresentative of a long term change due to the fact that the time series only comprises one year, but are still representative of short term phenomena due to the same nature of PG measurements [12]. Even though, many studies have found consistent/ robust results in atmospheric electricity with shorter time series.…”

“…Due to all this interest, significant efforts are being made in GEC research in order to find suitable locations to capture global signals from the GEC while overcoming signals from local electrical activity. Such studies include: Indian Ocean [8], Antarctica [9,10], Himalayas [11], Southern America [12] and Negev desert [13]. Contributions have also been given to the understanding of the GEC variability, e.g.…”

Transport of the smoke plume from Chiado’s fire in Lisbon (Portugal) sensed by atmospheric electric field measurements

“…In particular, in South America, a PG network is operating (Tacza et al 2014); this region comprises the Amazon rainforest (largest tropical rainforest in the world), and the use of this network could be of significant value in complementing visual and meteorological measurements.…”

Thunder and lightning—what determines where and when thunderstorms occur?

“…In regions remote from thunderstorms, a downward current of ∼2 pA m −2 flows through the weakly conducting atmosphere, due to ionization produced by galactic cosmic rays. Due to this small conduction current there is a downward electric field of ∼130 V m −1 at the Earth's surface (Harrison 2013, Tacza et al 2014. Elhalel et al (2014) have shown interesting space weather effects on this conduction current density.…”