The intensification of metallic layered phenomena above thunderstorms through the modulation of atmospheric tides

Yu, B., Xue, X., Kuo, C., Lu, G., Scott, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6411-5649, Wu, J., Ma, J., Dou, X., Gao, Q., Ning, B., Hu, L., Wang, G., Jia, M., Yu, C. and Qie, X. (2019) The intensification of metallic layered phenomena above thunderstorms through the modulation of atmospheric tides. Scientific Reports, 9 (1). 17907. ISSN 2045-2322 doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-54450-1

Abstract/Summary

We present a multi-instrument experiment to study the effects of tropospheric thunderstorms on the mesopause region and the lower ionosphere. Sodium (Na) lidar and ionospheric observations by two digital ionospheric sounders are used to study the variation in the neutral metal atoms and metallic ions above thunderstorms. An enhanced ionospheric sporadic E layer with a downward tidal phase is observed followed by a subsequent intensification of neutral Na number density with an increase of 600 cm−3 in the mesosphere. In addition, the Na neutral chemistry and ion-molecule chemistry are considered in a Na chemistry model to simulate the dynamical and chemical coupling processes in the mesosphere and ionosphere above thunderstorms. The enhanced Na layer in the simulation obtained by using the ionospheric observation as input is in agreement with the Na lidar observation. We find that the intensification of metallic layered phenomena above thunderstorms is associated with the atmospheric tides, as a result of the troposphere-mesosphere-ionosphere coupling.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/87351
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41598-019-54450-1
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Publisher	Nature
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