AGU 2021 presentations about GEC!

1 minute read

The Atmospheric Electrodynamics Group at UW has several talks and posters at the AGU Fall Meeting this year, concerning our Global Electric Circuit balloon flights from this summer:

  • Quantifying the Thunderstorm Contribution to Earth’s Global Electric Circuit: Simultaneous Multi-Point Measurements of the Fair-Weather Return Current by Instrumented Stratospheric Balloon Payloads (AE32A-06). I’m giving this talk at about 10:30AM CST in person. This talk will focus on vector electric field and conductivity measurements made during the Summer 2021 stratospheric balloon campaign in Sisters, OR.

  • Quantifying the Thunderstorm Contribution to Earth’s Global Electric Circuit: Comparisons of Global Lightning and Precipitation with Stratospheric Balloon Observations of Fair-Weather Return Current (AE32A-07). Jeremy Thomas, one of our collaborators from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, will be giving this talk virtually, immediately after my talk. It will focus on estimates of global thunderstorm activity based on lightning and precipitation measurements, which will be compared with the stratospheric balloon measurements electric current density.

  • Quantifying the Thunderstorm Contribution to Earth’s Global Electric Circuit: Overview of a New Approach to an Old Problem (AE35B-1923). Michael McCarthy, the PI of this project, will be presenting this poster at 16:00-18:00 CST. This presentation will summarize the experiment, including a comparison of the balloon measurements and global thunderstorm activity estimate, and place the problem in historical context.