Energetic electron precipitation during lightning activities over Indian landmass as observed from WWLLN and NOAA-15 satellite

Abstract

Lightning is a sudden release of electrostatic energy that plays a significant role in the ionospheric-magnetospheric coupling process. A short-term increase in the particle count rates (CR) in the Van Allen Radiation Belt (VAB) is known as the particle bursts. Due to lightning events, the increase in the number of high-energy particles in the inner region of the VAB (L < 2) is a fascinating research to implement. This paper tries to determine the number of lightning-induced particles, which can successfully establish a connection between the two regions of the atmosphere (the ionosphere and the magnetosphere). Lightning-generated electromagnetic radiation propagates through the Earth Ionosphere Waveguide (EIWG), where some energy leaks through and scatters particles in the radiation belt. By lowering the pitch angle, some particles precipitate into the ionosphere and cause secondary ionization. This excess particle count caused by lightning strokes is detected using data from the NOAA-15 satellite and data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) is used to verify the relationship between lightning stroke and particle count. In this paper, we process our work by using lightning locations over a specific region of India and the geographic/geomagnetic conjugate locations. The monthly variation shows a high correlation between the lightning stroke number and the particle counts within the conjugate geomagnetic location, while the correlation with the particle counts within the conjugate geographic location is significantly lower. In the second half of the paper, we use an automated energy filtration method, for the computation of the particle counts induced by maximum energetic lightning (having lightning energy value > 10 4 J and the particle counts induced by minimum energetic lightning (having lightning energy value < 10 4 J). The results of this analysis demonstrate that the variation of PCs in the conjugate geomagnetic location is more closely related to the maximum energetic lightning variation than the lowest energetic lighting variation. This paper will demonstrate the coupling process between the ionosphere and the magnetosphere based on counting the particles produced by lightning.