The ESRs and their projects

Measurements from the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) allow for simultaneous recording of high energy photons of from Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes (TGFs) and optical radiation from lightning. Matthias’ research contributes to understanding the production mechanisms of TGFs in a thunderstorm environment and how strongly they are connected to lightning. Especially the questions which phase of a lightning promotes TGF generation and if TGFs are always connected to optical radiation is of interest for the community.

The project should also contribute to the overall understanding of lightning and its initiation. Measurements from NASA’s Lightning Imaging Sensor (ISS-LIS) and the ground network GLD360 are taken into account to close the gap to previous research and long-term statistics.

Currently, she is working on an exceptional thunderstorm that was captured by ASIM over Darwin, Australia. She is working on the interpretation of ASIM optical observations and comparisons with ground based lightning systems.
She is also coupling my analysis with geostationary satellite data, atmospheric soundings and studying the thundercloud evolution with radar data (in collaboration with Australian Bureau of Meteorology). Besides her research activities within SAINT, this semester she is attending two PhD courses at DTU: 1) ‘’Journal Club in Geophysics, Astrophysics and Space Physics’’ which is focused on learning methods for exploitation and communication of research and 2)  ’’Mie scattering and image processing methods for remote sensing analysis of lightning interactions in clouds’’ which will contribute in strengthening her knowledge in both light scattering physics and image processing , in order to help her improving the processing and analysis of data from narrow band cameras for remote sensing of clouds and lightning. She is happy that she is pursuing a research career at DTU Space because she works with experienced scientists within the field and grow as researcher in a healthy working environment. She has significant support of her supervisors regarding scientific stuff and feels very comfortable and productive when working with them.Life in Denmark, met all of her expectations in both professional and personal matters. She fitted from the early days because she believes that although she is a Greek, she has many things from the Danish mentality in her life. Denmark in general and the Technical University of Denmark offers a work-life balance and opportunities to learn and gain experience, which are fundamental for her. SAINT gave her the opportunity to be part of a research project that upgrades my knowledge and skills, train her to become a researcher within the scientific community and pursue a life and a career in a country that fits with her characteristics.

Carolina Maiorana graduated in physics and astrophysics at the University of Torino. She is currently at the University on Bergen / Birkeland Centre for Space Science, working on the connection between Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) and lightning discharges.

TGFs are burst of gamma radiation associated to lightning; they are detected most often by particle detectors on satellites. They are usually observed over big tropical storms, but recently the ASIM instrument was placed on the International Space Station, allowing us to observe them also at higher latitudes. Her current project is about those high-latitude events: she is studying the characteristics of both the TGF itself and the parent thunderstorm, to see how they relate to the tropical ones. She is collaborating with the Universities of Bath and of Touluse for this project, since it involves data of different nature: high-energy radiation, meteorology, radio waves. It is possible that those TGFs will tell us something new about the physics of high-latitude thunderstorms.

Before that, she redesigned the selection criteria for TGFs used by the AGILE satellite and produced the 3rd TGF catalogue for the mission. With more than 2700 events over 3 years, this is currently the most complete catalogue available for the equatorial region; it will be very useful for the study of seasonal and geographic variations in TGFs production without the influence of different climate zones.

Simon Ghilain works currently on sprite and lightning flashes observation. Measurements led this summer during our field works have given a lot of sprite and lightning flashes events. Different photometers characterize the rise time and other parameters at very high frequency: 1 Mhz. The sprite is identified with a camera. The photometers give a very precise time which allows to find the parent lightning flash detected by a local lightning detection system. After the analyze at 1 mus - 1 ms scale, the convective structure and meteorological conditions are analyzed using cloud satellite data and all the data recorded from the ground during the night of observation. Satellite observation from ASIM have been analyzed during a placement, however the case where both ground observation and low orbital satellite observation cover the same case remain very rare. It explains we need a lot of campaigns and data to find similar cases. Data is processed with Python.

Currently pursuing a PHD at the University of Bath, in partnership with the UK manufacturer of meterological sensors Biral Ltd. The main objective of this research is to improve the performances of a recently developed single-site lightning location system, including hardware upgrades, and investigate the potential for research applications. The project uses data collected from multiple Biral thunderstorm detector sensors deployed in UK and southern France, concurrently with broadband EM measurements and optical observations of transient luminous events (TLE) with low-light CCD cameras. Satellite and radar reflectivity data are also utilised to further characterize the storm conditions leading to superbolt lightning, distributed in northern Europe especially in the winter season, which are related to distinctive large amplitude signatures detectable on the sensor up to several hundred kilometres away from the source.