Traditionally, research in atmospheric electricity, or perhaps more properly, atmospheric electrodynamics, has covered a broad range of topics, including the global electrical circuit, middle and upper atmosphere electrodynamics, thunderstorm electrification, lightning, and fair weather electrical properties. However, during the last few years, research in mesoscale meteorology and atmospheric chemistry has increasingly begun to take into account the factors of storm electrification, lightning, and chemical production by discharges.Several observational campaigns during the last few years have used rockets and balloons to investigate the electrodynamics of the middle and upper atmosphere. (The middle atmosphere comprises the stratosphere, roughly 12–50 km altitude, and the mesophere, roughly 50–90 km altitude.) One recent discovery is a previously unknown fair‐weather source of electric field and current in the stratosphere in middle latitudes [Holzworth, 1989]. The electric field has a magnitude of tens of millivolts per meter (mV/m), with daily variation and horizontal direction that rotate with the local inertial gravity‐wave period (typically 15–18 hours at middle latitudes). This field does not have a known source, such as thunderstorms or some ionospheric phenomenon; the source may be a result of electrodynamic coupling between ions and neutral molecules in the atmosphere.