A statistical study of lighting-induced electron precipitation (LEP) events observed by the CSES-01 satellite

The CSES-01 satellite, with its versatile set of payloads, is able to detect short bursts of lightning-induced electron precipitation (LEP) simultaneously with injected up-going whistler waves. The electron bursts are identified individually for each telescope of the low-energy detector of the high-energy particle package (HEPP-L) within the energy range from 100 to 250 keV. The whistler wave detection is based on the power spectral density of the magnetic field in the frequency range from 1 to 10 kHz, measured by the search coil magnetometer (SCM). The wave and particle observations of CSES-01 are complemented by the ground-based lightning network of the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN). The found LEP events occur within ≤120 ms of the causative lightning discharge. A statistical study of the LEP events has been performed, which includes a background estimation for the wave-particle correlation. The identified LEP events are found to be shifted significantly polewards of the initial lightning and extend over some 1000 km longitudinally. In addition, it was found that the distance from the LEP event to the lightning decreases as the absolute lightning latitude increases. This finding is in agreement with models of electron interaction with obliquely propagating lightning-generated whistlers and observations from previous missions.