1,1,1,1,- 1Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Norway (ingrid.engeland@uib.no)
- 2Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
- 3Nanjing University, China
- 4NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA
- 5Department of Atmospheric Science, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL, USA
From the discoveries by the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs (ALOFT), we know that thunderclouds can emit gamma-rays for hours over very large distances. Marisaldi et al. (2024) reported observations of numerous glowing regions, each containing several individual glows, as the aircraft passed over active thunderclouds. Overall, ALOFT detected more than 500 glows, showing a wide variety of time profiles, including glows with a gradual decay and those with a very sharp decrease in gamma-ray flux after reaching the peak intensity. Making use of the combination of instruments onboard ALOFT, as well as ground-based sensors, we explore the termination of gamma-ray glows detected by ALOFT. In this study, we focus on glows with a very fast decrease in flux (reduction by >50% in <20 ms) and explore which types of electric discharges are associated with this fast termination.
References:
Marisaldi, M. et al. (2024), Highly dynamic gamma-ray emissions are common in tropical thunderclouds, Nature, 634, 57, doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07936-6
How to cite: Bjørge-Engeland, I., Marisaldi, M., Østgaard, N., Mezentsev, A., Fuglestad, A., Cummer, S., Pu, Y., Quick, M., and Christian, H.: Discharge processes associated with fast decaying gamma-ray glows observed during the ALOFT aircraft campaign, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-19365, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-19365, 2026.
