Blitzortung.org provides a nice visualization tool for real time lightning strikes all over the world that can also be seen in different regions of the planet.
The ASDC is the entrance to ASIM news, data and ASIM scientific productivity since 2018. Collaborations with the ASIM facility science team (FST) can be established through this web.
The Coalition for Plasma Science is a group of institutions, organizations, and companies joining forces to increase awareness and understanding of plasma science and its many applications and benefits for society. We hope that by visiting this Web site you learn some new things about plasmas in our world, in our society, and in our economy.
Information on the different instrument onboard ASIM can be found here. The mission was launched on Aprl 2, 2018 and is presently extended up to March 2025. A further extension up to 2028 is now requested to ESA based on the great science achievements of ASIM. ASIM operated in nadir mode from April 2018 to Dec 2021. Between January 11, 2022 and February 10, 2024 ASIM was looking at limb. From February 11, 2024 ASIM will be moved back to nadir observation mode until end of the mission.
The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) is a global network of very low frequency (VLF) radio lightning sensors created by Prof. R. Holtworth. WWLLN is operated by the University of Washington in Seattle. Most ground-based observations in the 3 - 30 kHz VLF band are dominated by impulsive signals from lightning discharges called “sferics”. Significant radiated electromagnetic power exists from a few hertz to several hundred megahertz, with the bulk of the energy radiated at VLF. WWLLN produces regular maps of lightning activity over the entire Earth.
Only 30 years ago it was discovered that a thunderstorm is the birthplace of the most energetic natural particle acceleration on Earth and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are the most explosive manifestation of such a process capable of delivering 10e+18 high-energy photons from thunderclouds to space in a few tens of microseconds. Lightning and TGFs are closely related but the details of this relationship are yet to be understood. Gamma-ray glows are another hard radiation phenomenon in thunderstorms. They have much lower flux than the TGFs, but since they probably extend thousands of square kilometers and last for tens of minutes or even hours, they can have a much larger effect on the atmosphere locally. Flying over the source thunderstorm and making high-resolution measurements of the gamma-rays, optical signals, and electric-field changes is key to solving the questions:
How and under what conditions are TGFs produced?
How extended in space and time are gamma-ray glows?
In addition ALOFT will:
Perform International Space Station Lightning Imaging Sensor (ISS LIS) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) validation using improved suborbital instrumentation.
Evaluate new design concepts for next-generation spaceborne lightning mappers.
Make combined microwave and lightning measurements of tropical convection from a suborbital platform.
The ALOFT campaign will make measurements of TGFs and gamma-ray glows with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution. Coordinated optical, gamma-ray, and electric field change measurements will provide the foundation needed to uncover the detailed physics that enables the production of high energy radiation from thunderstorms. Since gamma-ray glows require strong electric fields throughout a thunderstorm, it has been suggested that gamma-ray glows might be a prerequisite for producing TGFs. However, the two phenomena have never been observed simultaneously from space.
The Plasma Data Exchange Project is a community-based project which was initiated as a result of a public discussion held at the 2010 Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC), a leading international meeting for the Low-Temperature Plasma community. This project aims to address, at least in part, the well-recognized needs for the community to organize the means of collecting, evaluating and sharing data both for modeling and for interpretation of experiments. At the heart of the Plasma Data Exchange Project is LXCat (pronounced "elecscat"), an open-access website for collecting, displaying, and downloading electron and ion scattering cross sections, swarm parameters (mobility, diffusion coefficient, etc.), reaction rates, energy distribution functions, etc. and other data required for modeling low temperature plasmas. The available data bases have been contributed by members of the community and are indicated by the contributor's chosen title.
The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) onboard GOES-16 (lunched Nov 2017) and GOES-17 geostationary satellites is a single-channel (777.4 nm), near-infrared optical transient detector that can detect the momentary changes in an optical scene, indicating the presence of lightning. GLM measures total lightning (in-cloud, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground) activity continuously over the Americas and adjacent ocean regions with near-uniform spatial resolution of approximately 10 km.
GLM is the first operational lightning mapper flown in geostationary orbit. GLM collects information such as the frequency, location and extend of lightning discharges to identify intensifying thunderstorms and tropical cyclones. Trends in total lightning available from the GLM provide critical information to forecasters, allowing them to focus on developing severe storms much easier and before these storms produce damaging winds, hail or even tordadoes.
Such storms exhibit a significant increase in total lightning activity, often many minutes before the radar detects the potential for severe weather. Used in combination with radar, satellite data, and surface observations, total lightning data from GLM has great potential to increase lead time for severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings and reduce false alarm rates. Knowledge of total lightning activity and its extent will help improve public safety. Data from the instrument will also be used to produce a long-term database to track decadal changes in lightning activity. This is important due to lightning’s role in maintaining the Earth-atmosphere electrical balance.
Destination Earth is a flagship initiative of the European Commission to develop a highly-accurate digital model of the Earth (a digital twin of the Earth) to model, monitor and simulate natural phenomena, hazards and the related human activities. These groundbreaking features assist users in designing accurate and actionable adaptation strategies and mitigation measures.
DestinE unlocks the potential of digital modelling of the Earth system at a level that represents a real breakthrough in terms of accuracy, local detail, access-to-information speed and interactivity.
By pushing the limits of computing and climate sciences, DestinE is an essential pillar of the European Commission’s efforts towards the Green Deal and Digital Strategy.
The data lake will bring together data from ESA, EUMETSAT, ECMWF as well as from Copernicus, and many other diverse sources, with new data from the Digital Twins. It will allow discovery and data access as well as big data processing in the cloud.
DestinE is creating several digital replicas covering different aspects of the Earth system and based on state-of-the-art simulations and observations. ECMWF is implementing the Digital Twin Engine, the complex software and data services needed for Earth System digital replicas, as well as the first two digital twins; Climate Change Adaptation, which will provide multidecadal simulations, and the Weather-induced Extremes twin, with both high-resolution forecasts and on-demand simulations.
The development of the main components of Destinantion Earth began in 2023. It is expected to be fully operative in 2026 or 2027.