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HO 2 Generation Above Sprite‐Producing Thunderstorms Derived from Low‐Noise SMILES Observation Spectra
Author(s) -
Yamada T.,
Sato T. O.,
Adachi T.,
Winkler H.,
Kuribayashi K.,
Larsson R.,
Yoshida N.,
Takahashi Y.,
Sato M.,
Chen A. B.,
Hsu R. R.,
Nakano Y.,
Fujinawa T.,
Nara S.,
Uchiyama Y.,
Kasai Y.
Publication year - 2020
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 - 10.1029/2019gl085529
Subject(s) - sprite (computer graphics) , thunderstorm , ionosphere , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , spectral line , remote sensing , physics , optics , geology , geophysics , astronomy , computer science , computer vision
No direct observational evidence of sprite‐produced active radicals has been presented owing to the difficulty of observing a small event area in the nighttime mesosphere, whereas sprite chemical models have indicated that sprite discharge locally affects the atmospheric composition. We present the first observational evidence of a HO2production above sprite‐producing thunderstorms from the coincidence of temporal‐spatial observations of HO2spectra, sprite events, and thunderstorms by two space instruments, a submillimeter‐wave limb spectrometer and ultraviolet/visible Imager and a ground‐based very low frequency radiation lightning detection network. A total of three areas was identified with enhanced HO2levels of approximately 1025molecules. A chemical sprite model indicates an increase in HO2in the considered altitude region; however, the predicted production due to a single sprite event is smaller than the observed enhancement. Our observational results suggest that sprites potentially contribute 1% of nighttime background HO2generation at altitudes of 75–80 km globally.