Current Research Updates: Lightning Characterization
From SpaceWeather
Intro
- One of the goals of this project is to gather data to understand how electrically charged particles propagate in the Earth's ionosphere. This will lead to the knowledge of how radiation from coronal mass ejections from our Sun travel and effect the ionosphere along with all of our technology (satellites, airplanes, power grids etc) are affected by it. The study of all this is called space weather and more detailed information can be found here Ionosphere.
- Now to start, we will make the problem smaller and begin by studying lightning in the Earth's ionosphere. Eventually we want to make this project into a satellite and study purely cloud to cloud lightning, but at this moment we are going even smaller and trying to study cloud to ground lighting in the Earth's neutral atmosphere. More on lightning can be found here Lightning.
- Here's our current task, we need to understand how lightning works, and characterize it. We essentially want to know the frequency ranges of the lighting (and how it varies it with distance) so that we make sure that we get all of the data while at the same time not damage our electronics. The team working on various components of this problem are Cody Bodman, Anastasia A. Ierides, and Mario Ortega.
Daily Planner
Articles on Lightning
