Chemical and thermal impacts of sprite streamers in the Earth's mesosphere

Abstract

A one‐dimensional self‐consistent model has been developed to study the chemical and thermal effects of a single sprite streamer in the Earth's mesosphere. We have used sprite streamer profiles with three different driving current durations (5 ms, 50 ms, and 100 ms) between 50 and 80 km of altitude and considering a kinetic scheme of air with more than 90 chemical species. Our model predicts strong increases in practically all the concentrations of the species studied at the moment of the streamer head passage. Moreover, their densities remain high during the streamer afterglow phase. The concentration of electrons can reach values of up to 108 cm−3 in the three cases analyzed. The model also predicts an important enhancement, of several orders of magnitude above ambient values, of nitrogen oxides and several metastables species. On the other hand, we found that the 4.26 μm IR emission brightness of CO2 can reach 10 GR at low altitudes (< 65 km) for the cases of intermediate (50 ms) and long (100 ms) driving currents. These results suggest the possibility of detecting sprite IR emissions from space with the appropriate instrumentation. Finally, we found that the thermal impact of sprites in the Earth's mesosphere is proportional to the driving current duration. This produces variations of more than 40 K (in the extreme case of a 100 ms driving current) at low altitudes (< 55 km) and at about 10 s after the streamer head.

Global Occurrence and Chemical Impact of Stratospheric Blue Jets Modeled With WACCM4

“…Several authors have investigated the local chemical impact of TLEs (Gordillo‐Vázquez, , ; Gordillo‐Vázquez & Donkó, ; Hoder et al, ; Parra‐Rojas et al, , ; Pasko et al, ; Pérez‐Invernón et al, ; Pérez‐Invernón, Luque, & Gordillo‐Vázquez, ; Sentman et al, ; Winkler & Notholt, ). Recently, Winkler and Notholt () developed a local chemical model of BJ obtaining an important local enhancement of NO x , N 2 O, and O.…”

CO2 Thermal Infrared Signature Following a Sprite Event in the Mesosphere

“…As a conclusion, this kinetic model of sprite streamer, adapted from that of Gordillo‐Vázquez (), completed with vibrational processes from Parra‐Rojas et al (), and applied with an altitude‐dependent pulse duration, leads to no significant disturbance of (010) and (100) levels and 168 to 255 K of Δ T vib for (001) from 70 to 40 km. The disturbance obtained for CO 2 (001) is of the same order of magnitude than that of Parra‐Rojas et al () at comparable altitudes (50–70 km; the authors did the computations between 50 and 80 km). Considering the processes of deexcitation of this level, R1 and R2, the significant radiative perturbation will be localized near 1,063 and 2,347 cm −1 (9.4 and 4.6 μm) in the simulated spectra.…”

“…In order to complete the vibrational kinetics and to describe the quenching of vibrational levels, we updated the kinetic scheme with V‐V transfers between N 2 (v = 2, …, 8) and CO 2 (v) and V‐T transfers between vibrational (N 2 , CO 2 ) and background atmosphere (O, O 2 , CO, CO 2 , N, and N 2 ). These processes and related rate coefficients are from Parra‐Rojas et al ().…”

Three‐dimensional modeling of lightning‐induced electromagnetic pulses on Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn

“…If the electric field is high enough, these molecules can be excited, producing light emissions by radiative decay. Depending on its nature, TLEs can be classified into elves, halos, sprites, blue jets, or giant jets, causing different chemical impact in the atmosphere and different light emissions [ Sentman et al , ; Gordillo‐Vázquez , ; Parra‐Rojas et al , , ; Kuo et al , ; Winkler and Notholt , ].…”