Recent Insights and Advances in Lightning and Other Thunderstorm-Related Transient Events
A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Upper Atmosphere".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 November 2025) | Viewed by 3196
Special Issue Editor
Interests: gamma-ray bursts; lightning; solar flares; remote sensing; terrestrial gamma-ray flashes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
I would like to invite submissions to this Special Issue on “Recent Insights and Advances in Lightning and Other Thunderstorm-Related Transient Events”.
It is well established that Earth’s atmosphere is an electrically dynamic and ever-changing environment. Lightning discharges in thunderstorms, resulting from charge separation processes and the subsequent electrical breakdown in the atmosphere, which play a fundamental role in balancing the global atmospheric electrical circuit. In recent decades, many advances have been made in our understanding of the physics of lightning, but many open questions still remain unanswered, especially regarding its initiation mechanism and its effects on the surrounding environment.
Nonetheless, thunderstorms have also been pointed out as capable of producing other types of discharges and transient events involving different energetics and durations. These phenomena include sub-millisecond Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), minute-lasting gamma-ray glows, hour-lasting Thunderstorm Ground Enhancements (TGEs), occasional releases of energetic particles, and upper-atmospheric Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). Recent years have seen an increasing interest in the investigation of these events, with improvements in spaceborne, airborne, and ground-based instrumentation and advances in observation techniques.
The multidisciplinary study of lightning and its associated phenomena can help provide new insights into the behavior of atmospheric electricity, the production of high-energy radiation in extreme environments, and the complex interactions between lightning and the surrounding context.
This Special Issue focuses on collecting recent results and new reviews about the physics of lightning, atmospheric discharges, and other thunderstorm-related transient events, with particular reference to new insights and advances in detection systems and observational campaigns.
Dr. Alessandro Ursi
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- lightning
- lightning electromagnetics
- global electric circuit
- thunderstorms
- thunderclouds
- lightning leaders and return strokes
- energetic radiation from lightning
- upper-atmospheric electrical discharges
- transient luminous events
- terrestrial gamma-ray flashes
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