R Giles Harrison and Maarten H P Ambaum 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 014003 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/1/014003
R Giles Harrison and Maarten H P Ambaum
Show affiliationsThe atmosphere's fair weather electric field is a permanent feature, arising from the combination of distant thunderstorms, Earth's conducting surface, a charged ionosphere and cosmic ray ionization. Despite its ubiquity, no fair weather electricity effect on clouds has been hitherto demonstrated. Here we report surface measurements of radiation emitted and scattered by extensive thin continental cloud, which, after ~2 min delay, shows changes closely following the fair weather electric field. For typical fluctuations in the fair weather electric field, changes of about 10% are subsequently induced in the diffuse short-wave radiation. These observations are consistent with enhanced production of large cloud droplets from charging at layer cloud edges.
92.60.Pw Atmospheric electricity
92.60.Jq Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation)
Issue 1 (January-March 2009)
Received 15 September 2008, accepted for publication 12 December 2008
Published 13 January 2009
R Giles Harrison and Maarten H P Ambaum 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 014003
K. Tatebe and C. H. Townes 2006 ApJ 644 1145
M Okabayashi et al 2002 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 44 B339
C. Zhu et al. 2009 ApJ 703 1176
V I Krauz 2006 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 48 B221
Daniel P. Marrone et al 2009 ApJ 701 L114
M. L. Lister et al. 2009 The Astronomical Journal 138 1874
E. Bittner et al 2007 EPL 78 58002
Felix Creutzig et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 044011
Dominique M Durand 2009 J. Neural Eng. 6 050202