Abstract
Various energetic luminous events occur in the upper Earth's atmosphere. They can be divided into two types: low altitude discharges (cloud-to-ground lightning, intra cloud lightning) and Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). TLEs is a wide class of optical phenomena occurring over a huge range of altitudes in the atmosphere, from about 15 to 110km, in close conjunction with tropospheric electrical activity. The energetic impact of these phenomena to the global electric circuit and atmospheric electricity could be underestimated due to irregular and selective on-ground measurements because these events occur above thunderstorm clouds and require special observation conditions. Recent satellite measurements provide unique possibility to study global distribution of TLEs with high statistics and measure their energy distribution. Luminous events can occur in conjunction with other high energy atmospheric phenomena, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) or thunderstorm ground enhancements (TGEs). This paper presents review of recent results of series of Moscow State University satellites (Universitetsky-Tatiana, Universitetsky-Tatiana-2, Vernov) which provided measurements of luminous transient phenomena in the atmosphere: their geographical, energy distribution, spectral characteristics and temporal and spatial dynamics. TLEs can be considered as the new “agent” in the space weather effects in the near-Earth's space.
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