Global Occurrence and Chemical Impact of Stratospheric Blue Jets Modeled With WACCM4

In this work we present the first parameterizations of the global occurrence rate and chemical influence of Blue Jets, a type of transient luminous event taking place in the stratospheric region above thunderclouds. These parameterizations are directly coupled with five different lightning parameterizations implemented in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM4). We have obtained a maximum Blue Jet global occurrence rate of about 0.9 BJ per minute. The geographical occurrence of Blue Jets is closely related to the chosen lightning parameterization. Some previously developed local chemical models of Blue Jets predicted an important influence onto the stratospheric concentration of N2O, NOx, and O3. We have used these results together with our global implementations of Blue Jets in WACCM4 to estimate their global chemical influence in the atmosphere. According to our results, Blue Jets can inject about 3.8 Tg N2O-N/year and 0.07 Tg NO-N/year near the stratosphere, where N2O-N and NO-N stand for the mass of nitrogen atoms in N2O and NO molecules, respectively. These production rates of N2O and NOx could have a direct impact on, for example, the acidity of rainwater or the greenhouse effect. We have found that Blue Jets could also slightly contribute to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. In particular, we have estimated that the maximum difference in the concentration of O3 at 30 km of altitude between simulations with and without Blue Jets can be about −5% in equatorial and polar regions. ©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO under projects 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. Authors F.J.P.I and F.J.G.V 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). 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. F. J. P.-I. acknowledges a PhD research contract, code BES-2014-069567. F. J. G.-V. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture under the Salvador de Madariaga program PRX17/00078.Peer Reviewe