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Halos and elves are transient luminous events produced in the lower ionosphere as a consequence of lightning-driven electromagnetic fields. These events can influence the upper atmospheric chemistry and produce optical emissions. We have developed different two-dimensional self-consistent models that couple electrodynamical equations with a chemical scheme to simulate halos and elves produced by vertical cloud-to-ground lightning discharges, compact intracloud discharges and energetic in-cloud pulses. The optical emissions from radiative relaxation of excited states of molecular and atomic nitrogen and oxygen have been calculated. We have upgraded previous local models of halos and elves to calculate for the first time the vibrationally detailed optical spectra of elves triggered by compact intracloud discharges and energetic in-cloud pulses. According to our results, the optical spectra of elves do not depend on the type of parent lightning discharge. Finally, we have quantified the local chemical impact in the upper atmosphere of single halos and elves. In the case of the halo, we follow the cascade of chemical reactions triggered by the lightning-produced electric field during a long-time simulation of up to 1 s. We obtain a production rate of NO molecules by single halos and elves of 10 and 10 molecules/J, respectively. The results of these local models have been used to estimate the global production of NO by halos and elves in the upper atmosphere at ∼10 Tg N/year. This global chemical impact of halos and elves is 7 orders of magnitude below the production of NO in the troposphere by lightning discharges. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under projects ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R and ESP2017-86263-C4-4-R and by the EU through the H2020 Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms (SAINT) project (Ref. 722337) and the FEDER program. F.J.P.I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. A.L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's H2020 program/ERC grant agreement 681257. The simulation data and plot codes presented here are available from figshare repository at https://figshare.com/s/f1c9f6c7 bc728d6669dd. Alternatively, requests for the data and codes used to generate or displayed in figures, graphs, plots, or tables are also available after a request is made to the authors F.J.P.I. (fjpi@iaa.es), A. L. (aluque@iaa.es), or F. J. G.V. (vazquez@iaa.es).

Halos and elves are transient luminous events produced in the lower ionosphere as a consequence of lightning-driven electromagnetic fields. These events can influence the upper atmospheric chemistry and produce optical emissions. We have developed different two-dimensional self-consistent models that couple electrodynamical equations with a chemical scheme to simulate halos and elves produced by vertical cloud-to-ground lightning discharges, compact intracloud discharges and energetic in-cloud pulses. The optical emissions from radiative relaxation of excited states of molecular and atomic nitrogen and oxygen have been calculated. We have upgraded previous local models of halos and elves to calculate for the first time the vibrationally detailed optical spectra of elves triggered by compact intracloud discharges and energetic in-cloud pulses. According to our results, the optical spectra of elves do not depend on the type of parent lightning discharge. Finally, we have quantified the local chemical impact in the upper atmosphere of single halos and elves. In the case of the halo, we follow the cascade of chemical reactions triggered by the lightning-produced electric field during a long-time simulation of up to 1 s. We obtain a production rate of NO molecules by single halos and elves of 10 and 10 molecules/J, respectively. The results of these local models have been used to estimate the global production of NO by halos and elves in the upper atmosphere at ∼10 Tg N/year. This global chemical impact of halos and elves is 7 orders of magnitude below the production of NO in the troposphere by lightning discharges. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under projects ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R and ESP2017-86263-C4-4-R and by the EU through the H2020 Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms (SAINT) project (Ref. 722337) and the FEDER program. F.J.P.I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. A.L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's H2020 program/ERC grant agreement 681257. The simulation data and plot codes presented here are available from figshare repository at https://figshare.com/s/f1c9f6c7 bc728d6669dd. Alternatively, requests for the data and codes used to generate or displayed in figures, graphs, plots, or tables are also available after a request is made to the authors F.J.P.I. (fjpi@iaa.es), A. L. (aluque@iaa.es), or F. J. G.V. (vazquez@iaa.es).

While lightning activity in Venus is still controversial, its existence in Jupiter and Saturn was first detected by the Voyager missions and later on confirmed by Cassini and New Horizons optical recordings in the case of Jupiter, and recently by Cassini on Saturn in 2009. Based on a recently developed 3-D model, we investigate the influence of lightning-emitted electromagnetic pulses on the upper atmosphere of Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter. We explore how different lightning properties such as total energy released and orientation (vertical, horizontal, and oblique) can produce mesospheric transient optical emissions of different shapes, sizes, and intensities. Moreover, we show that the relatively strong background magnetic field of Saturn can enhance the lightning-induced quasi-electrostatic and inductive electric field components above 1000 km of altitude producing stronger transient optical emissions that could be detected from orbital probes.©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO under projects ESP2013-48032-C5-5-R, ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R, and FIS2014-61774-EXP and by the EU through the FEDER program. F.J.P.I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. A.L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. ; Peer Reviewed

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.-- Data presented here are available from figshare repository (https://bit.ly/2ww816g).Alternatively, requests for data and codes used to generate figures, graphs, plots, or tables may be made to the authors F. J. G. V (vazquez@iaa.es) or F. J. P. I. (fjpi@iaa.es). ; We present simulations performed with six lightning parameterizations implemented in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5). The amount of lightning-produced nitrogen oxides (LNOx) by the various schemes considered is estimated. We provide some insight on how the lightning NO injected in the atmosphere influences the global concentrations of key chemical species such as OH, HO2, H2O2, NOx, O-3, SO2, CO, and HNO3. The vertical global averaged densities of HO2, H2O2, CO, and SO2 are depleted due to lightning while those of NO, NO2, O-3, OH, and HNO3 increase. Our results indicate that the parameterizations based on the upward ice flux (ICEFLUX) exhibit the largest global and midlatitude spatial correlations (0.73 and 0.632 for ICEFLUX and 0.72 and 0.553 for cloud top height) with respect to satellite global flash rate observations. Five out of the six lightning schemes investigated exhibit larger LNOx per flash in the midlatitudes than in the tropics. In particular, it is found that the ICEFLUX midlatitude LNOx per flash exhibits the largest difference with respect to its predicted tropical LNOx per flash, in agreement with available observations. When using CAM5, the ICEFLUX lightning parameterization could be considered a reliable lightning scheme (within its intrinsic uncertainties) in terms of its geographical distribution. Both ICEFLUX and cloud top height results agree with the enhancements of NO2 and O-3 produced by lightning over tropical Atlantic and Africa and the weaker lightning background over the tropical Pacific reported by Martin et al. (2007) in the periods and locations (upper troposphere) where lightning is expected to dominate the trace gas observations.©2019. The Authors. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO under Project ESP2017-86263-C4-4-R and by the EU through the H2020 Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms (SAINT) project (Ref. 722337) and the FEDER program. F. J. P. I. acknowledges support by a PhD research contract, Code BES-2014-069567 and by the EU through the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's H2020 programm/ERC Grant 681257. F. J. G. V. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture under the Salvador de Madariaga Program PRX17/00078. Authors F. J. G. V. and F. J. P. I. acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). H. H. acknowledges support from the DLR project KliSAW. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Computing resources were provided by the Climate Simulation Laboratory at NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. ; Peer reviewed

We investigate the attenuation of whistler waves generated by hypotetical Venusian lightning occurring at the altitude of the cloud layer under different ionospheric conditions. We use the Stanford full-wave method for stratified media of Lehtinen and Inan (2008) to model wave propagation through the ionosphere of Venus. This method calculates the electromagnetic field created by an arbitrary source in a plane-stratified medium (i.e., uniform in the horizontal direction). We see that the existence of holes in electronic densities and the magnetic field configuration caused by solar wind play an important role in the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the Venusian ionosphere. ©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) under projects ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R and FIS2014-61774-EXP, by the Research Council of Norway under contracts 208028/F50, 216872/F50, and 223252/F50 (CoE), and by the EU through the FEDER program. F. J. P. I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. N. L. was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement 320839. A. L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's H2020 program/ERC grant agreement 681257. ; Peer reviewed

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; High speed spectra (between ∼380 nm and ∼800 nm) of meter-long lightning-like discharges recorded at 672,000 fps and 1,400,000 fps (with 1.488 and 0.714 μs time resolutions and 160 ns exposure time) show optical emissions of neutral hydrogen, singly ionized nitrogen, oxygen, and doubly ionized nitrogen which are similar to those found in natural lightning optical emissions. The spectra recorded in the near ultraviolet-blue range (380–450 nm) and visible-near infrared (475–793 nm) exhibited features of optical emissions corresponding to several molecular species (and emission bands) like cyanide radical (CN) (Violet bands), N2 (Second Positive System), N2+ (first negative system), C2 (Swan band) and CO (Quintet and Ångström bands). Molecular species can be formed at regions of the lightning-like channel where the gas temperature would be milder and/or in the corona sheath surrounding the heated channel. We have quantified and compared electron densities and temperatures derived from different sets of neutral and ion line emissions and have found different sensitivities depending on the lines used. Temperatures derived from ion emissions are higher and change faster than those derived from neutral emissions. © 2021. The Authors. ; This work has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement SAINT 722337. Additionally, this work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion-Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, under project PID2019-109269RB-C43 and FEDER program. F. J. Perez-Invernon acknowledges the sponsorship provided by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research of Germany through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. T. N. K, F. J. Gordillo-Vazquez, M. Passas, and J. Sanchez acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andaluca (SEV-2017-0709). The authors acknowledge Prof. J. Montanya (of UPC) and LABELEC for having granted access to high voltage facilities in Terrassa (Spain). ; We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). ; Peer reviewed

We present the main parameters, design features, and optical characterization of the Granada Sprite Spectrograph and Polarimeter (GRASSP), a ground- based spectrographic system intended for the analysis of the spectroscopic signature of transient luminous events (TLEs) occurring in the mesosphere of the Earth. It has been designed to measure the spectra of the light emitted from TLEs with a mean spectral resolution of 0.235 nm and 0.07 nm/px dispersion in the wavelength range between 700 and 800 nm. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America ; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) (ESP2013-48032-C5-5-R, ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R, FIS2014-61774-EXP); European Union FEDER Program; Ramon y Cajal Contract (RYC-2011-07801). ; Peer reviewed

[Full-text paper not available yet] ; The dynamics and the reactivity of the plasma produced during pulsed laser ablation of LiNbO3 have been investigated. Optical emission spectroscopy combined with time-gated imaging with high spatial resolution is applied to the study of the factors that influence the plasma expansion process, the dynamics of the ejected species the influence of a background atmosphere (O2 and Ar) and the reactivity of the expanding plasma. Direct evidence for O2 dissociation occurring during expansion is presented and the temporal evolution of the spatial distribution of the dissociated O2 is studied in detail. The influence of dissociation and velocities of the ablated species on the quality of thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition are discussed. ; This work was partially funded by CICYT (Spain), under Project No. TIC 2002-03235 and by European Union under Project No. HPRN-CT-2002-00328. ; Peer reviewed

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. ; The physical mechanism of Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) has been studied for decades but it still holds many mysteries. Recent observations indicate that the fast breakdown discharges that produce NBEs sometimes contain a secondary fast breakdown that propagates back in the opposite direction but this has not been fully addressed so far in electromagnetic models. In this study, we investigate fast breakdown using different approaches that employ a Modified Transmission Line with Exponential decay (MTLE) model and propose a new model, named "rebounding MTLE model," which reproduces the secondary fast breakdown current in NBEs. The model provides new insights into the physics of the fast breakdown mechanism. © 2022 The Authors. ; This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. Additionally, this work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under project PID2019-109269RB-C43 and FEDER program. Dongshuai Li, Alejandro Luque, and F. J. Gordillo-Vázquez acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). ; Peer reviewed

In this work, we develop two spectroscopic diagnostic methods to derive the peak reduced electric field in transient luminous events (TLEs) from their optical signals. These methods could be used to analyze the optical signature of TLEs reported by spacecraft such as Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (European Space Agency) and the future Tool for the Analysis of RAdiations from lightNIngs and Sprites (Centre National d'Études Spatiales). As a first validation of these methods, we apply them to the predicted (synthetic) optical signatures of halos and elves, two types of TLEs, obtained from electrodynamical models. This procedure allows us to compare the inferred value of the peak reduced electric field with the value computed by halo and elve models. Afterward, we apply both methods to the analysis of optical signatures of elves and halos reported by Global LIghtning and sprite MeasurementS (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (National Space Organization) spacecraft, respectively. We conclude that the best emission ratios to estimate the maximum reduced electric field in halos and elves are the ratio of the second positive system of N to first negative system (FNS) of N (Formula presented.), the first positive system of N to FNS of N (Formula presented.) and the Lyman-Birge-Hopfield band of N to FNS of N (Formula presented.). In the case of reduced electric fields below 150 Td, we found that the ratio of the second positive system of N to first positive system of N can also be used to reasonably estimate the value of the field. Finally, we show that the reported optical signals from elves can be treated following an inversion method in order to estimate some of the characteristics of the parent lightning. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO under projects ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R and ESP2017-86263-C4-4-R and by the EU through the H2020 Science and Innovation with Thunderstorms (SAINT) project (Ref. 722337) and the FEDER program. F. J. P. I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. A. L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. T.A. was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant 24840040. The simulation data presented here are available from figshare repository at https://figshare.com/s/f1c9f6c7bc728d6669dd.JEM-GLIMS and ISUAL data presented in this study are available in the webpages http://www.ep.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/similar to jemglims/index-e.html and http://formosat.tw/nspo_esok/, respectively.

We present the first high spectral resolution (0.24 nm) spectra of sprites. These spectra were recorded in Europe in the summers and falls of 2015 and 2016 and during January 2017. The use of high spectral resolution has allowed us to resolve for the first time the internal (vibrorotational) structure of the sprite molecular N2 first positive system and to quantify the local gas (rotational) temperature of the mesosphere under the influence of sprites revealing that there is no measurable heating of the atmosphere associated to sprites at the altitudes explored. The temperatures of the explored region of the mesosphere range between 149 K ± 10 K and 226 K ± 20 K. The recorded spectroscopic data also provide valuable quantitative information on the concentrations of some of the vibrational levels of molecular nitrogen involved in transient red-near-infrared optical emissions from sprites. The regions of the transient luminous events recorded with our spectrograph (equipped with a horizontally oriented slit) correspond to altitudes in the 66 km to 74 km ± 5 km range. ©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under projects FIS2014-61774-EXP, ESP2015-69909-C5-2-R, and ESP2017-86263-C4-4-R, and by the EU through the FEDER program. The contribution of O. V. and J. M. was supported by projects ESP2013-48032-C5-3-R and ESP2015-69909-C5-5-R. A. L. was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 program/ERC grant agreement 681257. We acknowledge NowCast for providing LINET lightning data for research purposes. We also acknowledge AEMET (Spanish Meteorological Service) for providing some lightning data corresponding to January 2017. ; Peer reviewed

We report a hybrid imaging technique capable of performing measurements of the spatial, temporal, and spectral emission characteristics of laser-induced plasmas by use of a single detection system. We apply this technique to study the plasma produced by laser ablation of LiNbO3 and observe phenomena not seen in such detail with standard instruments. These include extreme line broadening up to a few nanometers accompanied by self-absorption near the target surface, and expansion dynamics that differ strongly between the different species. Overall, the wealth of quantitative information provided by this novel technique sheds new light on processes occurring during plasma expansion. © 2004 Optical Society of America. ; G. Epurescu acknowledges funding by the European Union (HPRN-CT-2000-00160). ; Peer Reviewed

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs) are powerful radio emissions from thunderstorms, which have been recently associated with blue optical flashes on cloud tops and attributed to extensive streamer electrical discharges named fast breakdown. Combining data obtained from a thunderstorm over South China by the space-based Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor, the Vaisala GLD360 global lightning network and very low frequency/low frequency radio detectors, here we report and analyze for the first time the optical emissions of blue luminous events associated with negative NBEs and located at the top edge of a thundercloud. These emissions are weakly affected by scattering from cloud droplets, allowing us to estimate the source extension and optical energy involved in the process. The optical energy in the 337-nm band emitted by fast breakdown is about 104 J, which involves around 109 streamer initiation events. © 2021. The Authors. ; This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. It also received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the M. Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement SAINT 722337. Additionally, this work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under project PID2019-109269RB-C43 and FEDER program. D. Li, A. Luque and F. J. Gordillo-Vázquez acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). F. Liu, G. Lu and B. Zhu are supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1501501) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41775004, 41875006, 42005068, U1938115). ; Peer reviewed

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. ; Blue LUminous Events (BLUEs) are transient corona discharges occurring in thunderclouds and characterized by strong 337.0 nm light flashes with absent (or weak) 777.4 nm component. We present the first nighttime climatology of BLUEs as detected by the Modular Multispectral Imaging Array of the Atmosphere-Space Interaction Monitor showing their worldwide geographical and seasonal distribution. A total (land and ocean) of (Formula presented.) 11 BLUEs occur around the globe every second at local midnight and the average BLUE land/sea ratio is (Formula presented.) 7:4. The northwest region of Colombia shows an annual nighttime peak. Globally, BLUEs are maximized during the boreal summer-autumn, contrary to lightning which is maximed in the boreal summer. The geographical distribution of nighttime BLUEs shows three main regions in, by order of importance, the Americas, Europe/Africa and Asia/Australia. © 2021 The Authors. ; ASIM is a mission of ESA's SciSpace programme for scientific utilization of the ISS and non-ISS space exploration platforms and space environment analogues. ASIM and the ASIM Science Data Centre are funded by ESA and by National grants of Denmark, Norway and Spain. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under project PID2019-109269RB-C43 and the FEDER program. S. Soler acknowledges a PhD research contract through the project PID2019-109269RB-C43. F. J. Pérez-Invernón acknowledges the sponsorship provided by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research of Germany through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. A. Luque and D. Li were supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under European Union H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. S. Soler, F. J. Gordillo-Vázquez, A. Luque and D. Li acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). ; Peer reviewed

This Open Access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ; Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) are signatures in radio signals from thunderstorms observed by ground-based receivers. NBEs may occur at the onset of lightning, but the discharge process is not well understood. Here, we present spectral measurements by the Atmosphere‐Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station that are associated with nine negative and three positive NBEs observed by a ground‐based array of receivers. We found that both polarities NBEs are associated with emissions at 337 nm with weak or no detectable emissions at 777.4 nm, suggesting that NBEs are associated with streamer breakdown. The rise times of the emissions for negative NBEs are about 10 μs, consistent with source locations at cloud tops where photons undergo little scattering by cloud particles, and for positive NBEs are ~1 ms, consistent with locations deeper in the clouds. For negative NBEs, the emission strength is almost linearly correlated with the peak current of the associated NBEs. Our findings suggest that ground-based observations of radio signals provide a new means to measure the occurrences and strength of cloud-top discharges near the tropopause. © 2021, The Author(s). ; The authors would acknowledge financial support from the National Key Research & Development Program (2017YFC1501501), the Project of Stable Support for Youth Team in Basic Research Field, CAS (YSBR-018), the B-type Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB41000000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41775004, 41831070, 41875006, 41974181, 42005068, and U1938115), and the Open Research Project of Large Research Infrastructures of CAS—"Study on the interaction between low/mid-latitude atmosphere and ionosphere based on the Chinese Meridian Project". F.F.L is also supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK2080000134). A.L. and D.L. is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 programme/ERC Grant Agreement 681257. F.J.G.V. acknowledges funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (AEI) under project PID2019‐109269RB‐C43 and the FEDER program. F.J.G.V., A.L., and D.L. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish AEI through the Center of Excellence "Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV‐2017‐0709). ASIM and the ASIM Science Data Centre are funded by ESA and by national grants of Denmark, Norway and Spain. We thank Vaisala for the GLD360 lightning data. ; Peer reviewed