Atmospheric Electricity for Climate (AtmosEleC)

Lightning presents a substantial hazard to human life and infrastructure, with many fatalities worldwide every year. The distribution of lightning is directly linked to Earth's climate, through solar heating and changes in surface temperature. Due to incomplete understanding of lightning generation processes, and lack of continuous long term global lightning monitoring, many uncertainties exist as to how future global warming will impact on lightning. An under explored method of monitoring global lightning (which can be achieved using a single sensor at one location), is through the Global Electric Circuit (GEC). This describes flow of charge between the conducting layers of the ionosphere (~70 km) and Earth's surface. As the GEC is primarily driven by thunderstorms, it represents the integrated effect of all electrically active storms on the planet. Research shows that GEC variables and global lightning activity are closely linked to global temperature changes, suggesting that the GEC can serve as a useful monitoring tool for global change.
Research suggests that the GEC itself also affects climate processes: clouds in particular, and possibly even rainfall. A lack of recent measurements of the GEC has meant that research into these important issues has stalled. This fellowship will combine novel technological advances and new analysis techniques to improve observations of the GEC for climate monitoring. Outcomes will include (i) developing a framework for regular monitoring of the GEC ionospheric potential from balloon measurements using a new sensor, (ii) improvement of fair-weather determination for GEC electric field measurements using reanalysis data, (iii) analysis of historical GEC datasets to study changes in climate related ocean circulation patterns. My motivation and background in atmospheric electricity puts me in a unique position to lead this innovative effort and to achieve real progress in investigating links between the GEC and global climate.