TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparison of high‐speed optical observations of a lightning flash from space and the ground
AU - Velde, Oscar A.
AU - Montanyà, Joan
AU - Neubert, Torsten
AU - Chanrion, Olivier
AU - Østgaard, Nikolai
AU - Goodman, Steven
AU - López, Jesús A.
AU - Fabró, Ferran
AU - Reglero, Victor
N1 - This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - We analyze a nighttime negative cloud‐to‐ground lightning flash in Colombia observed from the ground with a high‐speed camera at 5000 images per second, and from space by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station (ISS), the Lightning Imaging Sensor also on the ISS (ISS‐LIS), and the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on GOES‐16. The space instruments measure the oxygen band at 777.4 nm, allowing for direct comparisons of measurements, and the ground‐based camera observes in a wide visible band. After conversion to energy emitted at the cloud top, we find a good linear correspondence of the optical energies measured by the three space instruments, except that GLM values were 3 times higher. We attribute this mainly to the difference in viewing angles between spacecrafts and the cloud. Over the entirety of the ASIM observed flash, optical pulses were detected by GLM and LIS, only when the energy reported by ASIM was greater than 332 J and 949 J, respectively. Their detection rate corresponds to 14% and 2.5%, respectively, of the flash duration observed by ASIM. The temporal variation of the high‐speed camera luminosity matched well the features observed by ASIM around the time of the stroke, but reached ~3.9 times higher peak intensity during the return stroke, attributed to its broader spectral sensitivity band and a viewing angle advantage.
AB - We analyze a nighttime negative cloud‐to‐ground lightning flash in Colombia observed from the ground with a high‐speed camera at 5000 images per second, and from space by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station (ISS), the Lightning Imaging Sensor also on the ISS (ISS‐LIS), and the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on GOES‐16. The space instruments measure the oxygen band at 777.4 nm, allowing for direct comparisons of measurements, and the ground‐based camera observes in a wide visible band. After conversion to energy emitted at the cloud top, we find a good linear correspondence of the optical energies measured by the three space instruments, except that GLM values were 3 times higher. We attribute this mainly to the difference in viewing angles between spacecrafts and the cloud. Over the entirety of the ASIM observed flash, optical pulses were detected by GLM and LIS, only when the energy reported by ASIM was greater than 332 J and 949 J, respectively. Their detection rate corresponds to 14% and 2.5%, respectively, of the flash duration observed by ASIM. The temporal variation of the high‐speed camera luminosity matched well the features observed by ASIM around the time of the stroke, but reached ~3.9 times higher peak intensity during the return stroke, attributed to its broader spectral sensitivity band and a viewing angle advantage.
U2 - 10.1029/2020EA001249
DO - 10.1029/2020EA001249
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2333-5084
VL - 7
JO - Earth and Space Science
JF - Earth and Space Science
IS - 10
M1 - e2020EA001249
ER -