Real-time probing the daytime fluctuations of lower ionosphere using
time domain waveform of Narrow Bipolar Events and its preliminary
results
Abstract
Lower ionosphere is difficult to probe for conventional measurements, as
its altitude range is too low for the satellite and too high for
atmospheric balloons. Recently, an alternative method to study lower
ionosphere is using lightning signatures. In this work,we investigate
the daytime fluctuations of lower ionosphere by analyzing the time
domain VLF/LF waveform emitted by Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs), which
were recorded by an eight-station lightning location network called
Jianghuai-Area Sferic Array (JASA) for a systemic real-time monitoring
of lower ionosphere. JASA has been developed in 2012 and improved as a
real-time lightning location network since 2018. We analyze numerous
thunderstorm-day data and the preliminary results show that the lower
ionosphere virtual height descends linearly at a rate of 5.9 km/h during
sunrise, whereas rises linearly at a rate of 8.6 km/h during sunset.
Moreover, the lower ionosphere virtual height short-time fluctuation is
significantly modulated by the solar radiations’ flux density recorded
by GOES satellite and the lower ionosphere diurnal variation pattern
exhibiting a significant asymmetry, indicating that electron production
in the lower ionosphere is dominated by the effect of solar radiation
accelerating the neutral atmospheric molecules