The Chapman Conference of American Geophysical Union Series will be held at the University Park campus on May 10-14.
The conference, titled "The Effects of Thunderstorms and Lightning in the Upper Atmosphere" is being convened by Davis Sentman, professor of physics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Victor Pasko, associate professor of electrical engineering at Penn State; and Jeff Morrill, a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory.
This international conference will focus on the observations of transient luminous events (TLE), theory of transient luminous events, ELF/VLF effects of lightning and transient luminous events and energetic radiation from lightning and terrestrial gamma ray flashes. TLEs are atmospheric optical phenomena that occur above storm clouds and are believed to be electrically induced form of large scale gas discharge. These events are more commonly known as red sprites, blue jets and elves.
There were 114 abstracts submitted, from Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Fiji, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom and United States. Conference participant presentations will be published as a collection of articles in a special section of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics.
The conference coincides with the 20th anniversary of the first recorded image of a transient luminous event in the upper atmosphere by John R. Winckler of the University of Minnesota.
Winckler was testing a low-light television camera when he serendipitously captured two frames of the image. After the observation of this phenomenon, a review of NASA video tapes from the space shuttle payload bay low-light television camera confirmed the discovery by capturing more than a dozen of these events from space. Since this discovery, researchers have filmed and documented thousands of events leading to more questions than answers.
This conference will bring together active researchers in the field to assess and review the current state of both experimental and theoretical research. Participants will identify key theoretical problems and coupling processes of possible relevance to the larger geophysical system and discuss ideas on possible new types of measurements that could help elucidate key aspects of underlying physical processes.
Funding for the conference is provided by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and European Office of Aerospace Research and Development.
More on the conference can be found online at www.agu.org/meetings/chapman/2009/bcall/.