Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2014

Convener:*Sato Mitsuteru(Department of Cosmoscience, Hokkaido University), Toru Adachi(Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University), Tomoo Ushio Tomoo(Information and communication engineering department, Osaka University), Yukihiro Takahashi(Department of Cosmosciences, Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University)

Lightning is the energetic phenomena of electrical breakdown, occurring after charge separation processes operating on micro and macro-scales, leading to strong electric fields within thunderstorms. Lightning has severe impact on the lower and middle atmoephere and can excite transient luminous events (TLEs) occurring at the stratosphere and mesosphere. In addition to this, lightning is always associated with severe weather and tropical storms like typhoons and hurricanes, often accompanied by torrential rains and flash floods. It has significant chemical and physical effects on the troposphere and mesosphere and drives the fair-weather electric field. In this session, new results derived from the recent satellite observations of lightning and TLEs (JEM-GLIMS mission) will be presented. This session also seeks contributions on the meteorology of thunderstorms, the detection of thunderstorms from space and ground networks, using lightning data as proxy for severe weather, the climatic effects of thunderstorms and their impact on the global circuit.