TARANIS project

Atmospheric storms constitute one of the most significant disturbance phenomena in the Earth's environment. Two thousand storms are permanently active throughout the world, producing 50 to 100 lightning bolts per second. Recent observations of light emissions in the medium and upper atmosphere and of gamma emissions from atmospheric origins demonstrate that there is impulsive coupling of the Earth's atmosphere with the ionosphere and the magnetosphere above active storm cells.

TARANIS aims at providing a sufficiently complete package of novel instrumentation to answer the following questions:

(1) Advance physical understanding of the links between Transient Luminous Events (TLE) and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flash (TGF), in their source regions, and the environmental conditions (lightning activity, variations in the thermal plasma, occurrence of extensive atmospheric showers, etc);

(2) Identify the generation mechanisms for TLEs and TGFs and, in particular, the particle and wave field events which are involved in the generation processes or which are produced by the generation processes;

(3) Evaluate the potential effects of TLEs, TGFs, and bursts of precipitated and accelerated electrons (in particular lightning induced electron precipitation and runaway electron beams) on the Earth atmosphere or on the radiation belts.

Transient Luminous Events (TLE)