EGU24-15389, updated on 09 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15389
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

TGFs observed by the ALOFT 2023 flight campaign during an ISS overpass

Ingrid Bjørge-Engeland1, Nikolai Østgaard1, Timothy Lang2, Martino Marisaldi1, J. Eric Grove4, Mason Quick2, Hugh Christian3, Christopher Schultz2, Richard Blakeslee2, Ian Adams6, Rachael Kroodsma6, Gerald Heymsfield6, Andrey Mezentsev1, David Sarria1, Anders Fuglestad1, Nikolai Lehtinen1, Kjetil Ullaland1, Shiming Yang1, Bilal Hasan Qureshi1, Jens Søndergaard1, and the ALOFT team*
Ingrid Bjørge-Engeland et al.
  • 1University of Bergen, Birkeland Centre for Space Science, Department of Physics and Technology, Norway (ingrid.engeland@uib.no)
  • 2NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, USA
  • 3Department of Atmospheric Science, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA
  • 4U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA
  • 6NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

During the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs (ALOFT) campaign in July 2023, the International Space Station (ISS), at an altitude of approximately 410 km, passed over the same region as covered by ALOFT within a short time period on the 24th of July. The ALOFT campaign, which carried gamma-ray detectors, photometers, and instruments for characterizing the electrical activity and the cloud environment, flew at an altitude of approximately 20 km and covered thunderstorms over the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean during its 60 flight hours. The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) is mounted on the ISS, with its Modular X- and Gamma-ray Sensor (MXGS) designed for observing TGFs. During the ISS overpass, ALOFT observed six TGFs within less than two minutes that were all within the field of view of the ASIM instrument. However, none of the TGFs were detected by ASIM. Here we present the six TGFs observed by ALOFT during the ISS overpass and discuss their source properties. The ASIM non-detection provides a strong upper limit on the TGF fluence.

ALOFT team:

N. Østgaard1, T. Lang 2, M. Marisaldi1, J. E. Grove4, M. Quick 2, H. Christian 3, C. Schultz2, R. Blakeslee2, I. Adams6, R. Kroodsma6, G. Heymsfield6, A. Mezentsev1, D. Sarria1, I. Bjørge-Engeland 1, A. Fuglestad 1, N. Lehtinen1, K. Ullaland1, S. Yang1, B. Hasan Qureshi1, J. Søndergaard1, B. Husa1, D. Walker3, D. Shy4, M. Bateman3, D. Mach13, P. Bitzer3, M. Fullekrug7, M. Cohen8, M. Stanley9, S. Cummer10, J. Montanya11, M. Pazos12, C. Velosa5, O. van der Velde11, Y. Pu10, P. Krehbiel9, J. A. Roncancio11, J. A. Lopez11, M. Urbani 11, A. Santos 5

How to cite: Bjørge-Engeland, I., Østgaard, N., Lang, T., Marisaldi, M., Grove, J. E., Quick, M., Christian, H., Schultz, C., Blakeslee, R., Adams, I., Kroodsma, R., Heymsfield, G., Mezentsev, A., Sarria, D., Fuglestad, A., Lehtinen, N., Ullaland, K., Yang, S., Hasan Qureshi, B., and Søndergaard, J. and the ALOFT team: TGFs observed by the ALOFT 2023 flight campaign during an ISS overpass, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-15389, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15389, 2024.