Global occurrence rate of elves and ionospheric heating due to cloud-to-ground lightning

Abstract

We present ground-based observations of elves made using an optical free-running photometer along with VLF/LF observations of the lightning electromagnetic pulse (EMP) magnetic field. We use these experimental observations to investigate the properties of the lightning return stroke that control the production of optical elve emissions. Two summers of data containing observations of over 600 elves along with the LF magnetic field of the associated lightning are analyzed. By training a classifier on features of the EMP ground wave, we find that we are able to accurately predict whether or not a stroke produced an elve. We find that the peak current of the causative discharge predicts elve production with 90% accuracy. Further, we find that the production probability of elves as a function of peak current fits a linear regression, with a 50% elve probability for peak currents of 88kA. We use this finding along with global data from the GLD360 lightning geolocation network to extrapolate the global elve production rate; we show that approximate to 0.8% of all cloud-to-ground lightning discharges produce elves. Finally, using GLD360 data and a numerical model of the lightning EMP, we estimate the total amount of ionospheric heating due to lightning, amounting to approximately 2MW of continuous power dissipated globally in the lower ionosphere.