Atmospheric tides play an important role in interacting with both the lower and upper atmosphere. Amongst the phenomena studied are upper-atmospheric lightning discharges, such as luminous events called red sprites, sprite halos, blue jets, and elves.
Atmospheric electricity is the regular diurnal variations of the Earth's atmospheric electromagnetic network (or, more broadly, any planet's electrical system in its layer of gases). The Earth’s surface, the ionosphere, and the atmosphere is known as the global atmospheric electrical circuit.[9] Lightning discharges 30,000 amperes, at up to 100 million volts, and emits light, radio waves, x-rays and even gamma rays.[10] Plasma temperatures in lightning can approach 28,000 kelvins and electron densities may exceed 1024/m³
The ionosphere is a shell of electrons and electrically charged atoms and molecules that surrounds the Earth, stretching from a height of about 50 km to more than 1000 km. It owes its existence primarily to ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
Ionization depends primarily on the Sun and its activity. The amount of ionization in the ionosphere varies greatly with the amount of radiation received from the sun. Thus there is a diurnal (time of day) effect and a seasonal effect. The local winter hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun, thus there is less received solar radiation. The activity of the sun is associated with the sunspot cycle, with more radiation occurring with more sunspots. Radiation received also varies with geographical location (polar, auroral zones, mid-latitudes, and equatorial regions). There are also mechanisms that disturb the ionosphere and decrease the ionization. There are disturbances such as solar flares and the associated release of charged particles into the solar wind which reaches the Earth and interacts with its geomagnetic field.
This image shows the DIFFERENCE between current OBSERVED HOURLY conditions and PREDICTED MONTHLY conditions for the global ionosphere. The colours blue, green, yellow, red, correspond to "enhanced", "normal", "mildly depressed" and "depressed" conditions respectively. Depressions and enhancements are with respect to the IPS predicted monthly T index for that month.
