The Contribution of Sprite Streamers to the Chemical Composition of the Mesosphere‐Lower Thermosphere

Abstract

Sprites are mesospheric filamentary discharges that liberate and accelerate large quantities of electrons. They produce local enhancements of some chemical species and fast (millisecond) optical emissions. In this work, we couple a self‐consistent 2‐D model of sprites with an extensive chemical scheme to calculate the injection of chemical species by one sprite streamer in the mesosphere 0.85 ms after its onset. The N, NO, and N2O injections per streamer are about 1021 atoms, 6 × 1019 molecules, and 1018 molecules, respectively. According to our results, longer simulations are necessary to determine the role of sprites in the concentration of N2O in the mesosphere. We also calculate the contribution of sprite glows to space‐based photometers of the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor and the Tool for the Analysis of RAdiations from lightNIngs and Sprites.

Global Frequency and Geographical Distribution of Nighttime Streamer Corona Discharges (BLUEs) in Thunderclouds

“…Our global and seasonal nighttime thundercloud streamer corona distributions, zonal and meridional averages, and nighttime variability provide the first worldwide view of coronas occurring in thunderstorms. These results can set the path for future studies that should deepen our knowledge on key themes such as types of corona discharges in thunderclouds, morphology (and dynamics) of optical (and radio) emissions from the heads and long-lasting glows of streamers in thundercloud coronas (Luque et al, 2016;Pérez-Invernón et al, 2020), role of meteorological conditions (F. in favoring their initiation/deactivation (Huang et al, 2021) and, finally but no less important, to explore the impact of non-equilibrium (electron driven) chemical reactions triggered by hundreds of millions of streamers in kilometer long cloud coronas (Brune et al, 2021;Gordillo-Vázquez & Pérez-Invernón, 2021) on the atmospheric chemistry of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.…”

Blue Flashes as Counterparts to Narrow Bipolar Events: The Optical Signal of Shallow In‐Cloud Discharges

“…For example, the estimated K is highly sensitive to the assumed streamer radius: had we chosen a radius of 5 mm at atmospheric pressure, the estimation of K would be reduced by about a factor 15. It is also possible that a large fraction of the optical signal in fast breakdown is emitted not close to streamer heads but from long‐lived glows, as is the case in sprites (Luque et al., 2016; Pérez‐Invernón et al., 2020).…”

Model simulations of chemical effects of sprites in relation with observed HO<sub>2</sub> enhancements over sprite-producing thunderstorms

“…Test simulations have shown that the sprite altitude region is not significantly affected if different boundary conditions are used, e.g. linearly extrapolated SABER mixing ratios or O and H concentrations from the NRLMSIS-00 model (Picone et al, 2002). The model simulation with fast vertical transport agrees well with the MLS water measurements at altitudes above ∼ 75 km.…”