Global Frequency and Geographical Distribution of Nighttime Streamer Corona Discharges (BLUEs) in Thunderclouds
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