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Thunderstorms: Trace Species Generators

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Part of the book series: Research Topics in Aerospace ((RTA))

Abstract

In the upper troposphere, both natural and anthropogenic processes control the budget of nitric oxide (NO), a highly reactive and pollutant trace gas. The main local NO sources in the upper troposphere are emissions from aircraft and production by lightning. In the past 20 years, DLR studied the latter source in airborne field experiments accompanied with model simulations. The global lightning NO source is found to be distinctly larger than that from aircraft (factor ~5, uncertainty ~50–100 %). Lightning flashes in tropical regions seem to produce less NO per flash compared to other regions.

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Acknowledgments

The work presented here was mainly funded by the European Commission and DLR. During the field campaigns, many colleagues from the DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the DLR Flight Experiments Department contributed to this work.

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Correspondence to Heidi Huntrieser .

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Huntrieser, H., Höller, H., Grewe, V. (2012). Thunderstorms: Trace Species Generators. In: Schumann, U. (eds) Atmospheric Physics. Research Topics in Aerospace. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30183-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30183-4_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-30183-4

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