Lightning is the energetic manifestation of electrical breakdown, taking place after charge separation processes operating on micro and macro-scales, leading to strong electric fields within thunderstorms. It has significant effects on various atmospheric layers and drives the fair-weather electric field. This session seeks contributions from research in atmospheric electricity regarding cloud physics and lightning, lightning physics, modeling of the electricity of thunderstorms, lightning and global circuit, and lightning in relation with middle atmospheric events are appreciated.
As thunderstorms pose major natural hazards with immediate implications for infrastructure and the safety of air-travel, lightning data is becoming an increasingly important data source for meteorology. Lightning detection techniques using different methods, network engineering and statistical results are to be part of the session. Lightning data can be studied and analyzed under many points of view and each one is welcome in this session, which is open to all aspects of modeling and theoretical presentations related to the understanding of the complex discharge processes.
Lightning is often accompanied by transient luminous events (TLE, e.g. sprites, halos, jets and elves) which impact the upper atmosphere and may connect (in an electrical sense) the ionosphere and the planet's surface. This session invites contributions revolving on observations and modeling of these complex phenomena. Additionally, we invite contributions on the properties and occurrence of lightning on other planets in the solar system, and the effects of lightning discharges on atmospheric chemistry and physics on those planets.