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Modification of the lower ionospheric conductivity by thunderstorm electrostatic fields
Author(s) -
Salem Mohammad A.,
Liu Ningyu,
Rassoul Hamid K.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl066933
Subject(s) - ionosphere , thunderstorm , conductivity , computational physics , electron , geophysics , electron density , reflection (computer programming) , atmospheric sciences , ion , ionospheric reflection , physics , meteorology , ionospheric heater , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
This paper reports a modeling study of the modifications of the nighttime lower ionospheric conductivity by electrostatic fields produced by underlying thunderstorms. The model used combines Ohm's law with a simplified lower ionospheric ion chemistry model to self‐consistently calculate the steady state nighttime conductivity above a thunderstorm. The results indicate that although the electron density is generally increased, the lower ionospheric conductivity can be reduced by up to 1–2 orders of magnitude because electron mobility is significantly reduced due to the electron heating effect. For a typical ionospheric density profile, the resulting changes in the reflection heights of extremely low frequency and very low frequency waves are 5 and 2 km, respectively.