ANGEO Annales Geophysicae ANGEO Ann. Geophys. 1432-0576 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/angeo-24-2921-2006 Assigning the causative lightning to the whistlers observed on satellites Chum J. 1 Jiricek F. 1 Santolik O. 1 2 Parrot M. 3 Diendorfer G. 4 Fiser J. 1 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Bocni II/1401, 14131 Prague, Czech Republic Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, V Holesovickach 2, 18000 Prague, Czech Republic LPCE/CNRS, 3A Avenue de la Recherche Scientifique, 45071 Orléans, France Austrian Electrotechnical Association (OVE-ALDIS), Kahlenberger Str. 2A, 1190 Vienna, Austria 21 11 2006 24 11 2921 2929 Copyright: © 2006 J. Chum et al. 2006 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/24/2921/2006/angeo-24-2921-2006.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/24/2921/2006/angeo-24-2921-2006.pdf

We study the penetration of lightning induced whistler waves through the ionosphere by investigating the correspondence between the whistlers observed on the DEMETER and MAGION-5 satellites and the lightning discharges detected by the European lightning detection network EUCLID. We compute all the possible differences between the times when the whistlers were observed on the satellite and times when the lightning discharges were detected. We show that the occurrence histogram for these time differences exhibits a distinct peak for a particular characteristic time, corresponding to the sum of the propagation time and a possible small time shift between the absolute time assigned to the wave record and the clock of the lightning detection network. Knowing this characteristic time, we can search in the EUCLID database for locations, currents, and polarities of causative lightning discharges corresponding to the individual whistlers. We demonstrate that the area in the ionosphere through which the electromagnetic energy induced by a lightning discharge enters into the magnetosphere as whistler mode waves is up to several thousands of kilometres wide.

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