Occurrence of elves and lightning during El Niño and La Niña

Wu, Yen‐Jung; Chen, Alfred; Hsu, Huang‐Hsiung; Chou, Jung-Hua; Chang, Shih Cheng; Lee, L. J.; Lee, Ya Ju; Su, H.; Kuo, Cheng-Ling; Hsu, R.; Frey, H. U.; Mende, S. B.; Takahashi, Yukihiro; Lee, L. C.

doi:10.1029/2011gl049831

Cited by 22 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…These results suggest that the Kuroshio transport has gradually become stronger and more stable over the past 100 years. Previous climate model studies and reanalyzed observation data also showed the warming and acceleration of the western boundary currents resulting from the intensified wind stress curl from increased atmospheric CO 2 [ Wu et al , ; Sakamoto et al , ; Saenko et al , ]. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, including the Kuroshio Current, is driven by the westerly jet and trade wind on the ridge of the Hadley cell.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

A 150‐year variation of the Kuroshio transport inferred from coral nitrogen isotope signature

et al. 2016

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The Kuroshio Current is a major global ocean current that drives the physical ocean-atmosphere system with heat transport from tropical to temperate zones in the North Pacific Ocean. We reconstructed the variability of the Kuroshio transport over the past 150years using coral skeletal nitrogen isotopic composition (N-15(coral)). A 150year N-15(coral) record (1859-2008 A.D.) is 4 times the length of the observational record (1971 to present) and could provide a direct comparison with global climate change, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index and El-Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), through recent global warming. Coral cores from Porites were collected from Tatsukushi Bay in 2008 on the Pacific coast of Japan, which is located on the northern front of the Kuroshio Current. N-15(coral) was used as a proxy to record the N-15 of nitrate (N-15(nitrate)) controlled by the upwelling of subtropical subsurface water (N-15(nitrate); similar to+2-+3), and N-15(coral) was negatively correlated with observations of the Kuroshio transport (R=-0.69, P<0.001) and the 2year lagged PDO index (R=-0.63, P<0.005) from 1972 to 2007. The 150year record of N-15(coral) suggested that the Kuroshio transport varied with similar to 25year cycle, and the amplitude became more stable, and the volume was intensified through the twentieth century. The Kuroshio transport was intensified by the La Nina state in the early 1900s and by the El Nino-PDO state after the 1920s. Our results suggested that the Kuroshio transport was influenced by the combined climate modes of ENSO and PDO during the last century

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

A 150‐year variation of the Kuroshio transport inferred from coral nitrogen isotope signature

et al. 2016

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“…This result implies that no additional correction for the variation of detection capability is needed for the statistical analyses of the TLE global occurrence rate and distribution reported by Chen et al (2008), , as well as the studies of the ISUAL recorded lightning Wu et al 2010). …”

Section: Impact Of the Effective Gain Changementioning

confidence: 86%

Sensitivity Degradation of ISUAL Instruments and Its Impact on Observations

Chen¹,

Wu²,

Chiang³

et al. 2012

Terr. Atmos. Ocean. Sci.

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In the past 6 years, the ISUAL payload onboard the Taiwanese FORMOSAT-2 satellite has successfully carried out the primary mission of performing a global survey of transient luminous events (TLE) and lightning activities. The observation data have been used to construct the first global distribution map of TLEs and to infer their occurrence rates. To register dim TLE emissions at night, ISUAL employs electron-multiplying devices like a photomultiplier, multi-anode array, and microchannel plate to intensify the photons emitted by transient events. These devices, however, will degrade gradually with age. The degradation rate and the performance change were monitored through periodic calibration observations and are investigated carefully in order to achieve precise photometry and accurate statistics. The annual degradation rates up to 14% were identified for some of the sensor elements. This paper presents the variations of instrument efficiencies and overall detection capabilities, before and after applying a gain-adjustment to compensate for sensor degradation. The resulting stable trend of the ISUAL trigger and lightning rates suggests that the bias from instrument degradation and gain adjustments is minimal. This point is also supported by the near constant sprite and halo detection rates deduced from different statistical temporal intervals. Hence, the anomalies in the ISUAL elve detection rate for 2008 ~ 2009 likely are due to the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. Forecast based on the ISUAL performance trend also indicates that the ISUAL sensors have sufficient sensitivity margins to operate efficiently until the end of 2013, or even beyond.

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“…[] for the WWLLN lightning in 2010. This difference may come from year‐to‐year variations resulting from, for example, El Niño and La Niña events [ Sátori et al ., ; Wu et al ., ], or the variable detection efficiency of the network as more stations are added. Previous studies [ Barrington‐Leigh and Inan , ; Cheng et al ., ; Kuo et al ., ; Chen et al ., ] have indicated that TLEs, especially elves, are caused by energetic lightning.…”

Section: Energies Of Typical and Tle‐producing Lightningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energetics and geographic distribution of elve‐producing discharges

Chen

Hsu

2014

JGR Space Physics

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The major types of transient luminous events (TLEs) are believed to be directly triggered by cloud-to-ground discharges. Intense lightning generally seems to have a higher production efficiency for TLEs, but this observation has not yet been statistically investigated. Two data sets, the upgraded World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) lightning stroke data and the Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL) TLE data, were used to investigate the energetics and the geographic distribution of TLE-producing lightning. The global median energy of the strokes that produced the TLEs is at least an order of magnitude higher than the global median stroke energy for WWLLN lightning in the same data window. Furthermore, the energy distributions of the elve-producing strokes exhibit no oceanic and land disparity. These results reveal that the elves are indeed triggered by energetic lightning and the production efficiency of elves with respect to the stroke energy of the causative lightning was insensitive to the underlying landform. Analysis of the spatial correlation between the ISUAL elves and the WWLLN lightning reveals that the geographic distribution of the ISUAL elves agreed well with that for the most energetic 10% of the WWLLN lightning strokes, better than for total lighting. We also found that elve occurrence rates in the apparently reduced detection regions behind the Earth's limb may have been greatly underestimated, partially due to the failure in providing triggers to initiate ISUAL recording or the severity of atmospheric attenuation to the elve emissions that may have caused them to be undetected.

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Occurrence of elves and lightning during El Niño and La Niña

Cited by 22 publications

References 25 publications

A 150‐year variation of the Kuroshio transport inferred from coral nitrogen isotope signature

A 150‐year variation of the Kuroshio transport inferred from coral nitrogen isotope signature

Sensitivity Degradation of ISUAL Instruments and Its Impact on Observations

Energetics and geographic distribution of elve‐producing discharges

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