Research Objectives:
Tracking dynamic storms is a challenge, but lightning associated with thunderstorms can provide scientists an indirect way of monitoring global weather. This project employs very-low-frequency (VLF) radio receivers at Palmer Station, operated in collaboration with the British and Brazilian Antarctic Programs, both of which operate similar receivers. All are contributors to the Global Change Initiative.
The VLF receivers measure changes in the amplitude and phase of signals received from several distant VLF transmitters. These changes follow lightning strokes because radio (whistler) waves from the lightning can cause very energetic electrons from the Van Allen radiation belts to precipitate into the upper atmosphere. This particle precipitation then increases ionization in the ionosphere, through which the propagating VLF radio waves must travel. Because the orientations to the VLF transmitters are known, it is possible to triangulate the lightning sources that caused the changes. Once the direction of the lightning source is known, it can be subjected to waveform analysis and used to remotely track the path of thunderstorms.
The data will be correlated with data from the antarctic Automatic Geophysical Observatory network and will be used by scientists studying the magnetosphere and the ionosphere.
