Long duration gamma-ray glows observed from the tops of thunderstorms

The Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE) observed 12 γ-ray glows from thunderstorms near Montana and Florida during its Summer 2009 campaign. These glows have been observed from both the ground and air but this is the first evidence that they are a common, long duration occurrence at the tops of thunderclouds. Glows could be evidence that continuous relativistic runaway with feedback limits thunderstorm charging in a way that competes with lightning. We compare our observed glows to local lightning activity and find a slight but poor correlation, indicating that lightning and glows measure different aspects of cloud electrification. We have shown for all 11 of our observed glows in Florida that there is always an active cell nearby, but there were also many passes near active cells that had no observed glow. We will examine the meteorological differences between active lightning cells with and without glows. We have found the spectrum to be very hard for each glow, with a large fraction of the counts being above 5 MeV. Using a Monte Carlo simulation of relativistic runaway with positron feedback and a GEANT3 model of the atmosphere and instrument response from within a plane, we will distinguish between two different possibilities for a hard spectrum: an upward relativistic avalanche very deep in the atmosphere, so that most low energy photons have been removed via Compton scattering, and a downward relativistic avalanche between the upper positive and the screening layer, with the bremsstrahlung from the upward positron beam (a side-effect of feedback) producing the glow. If the latter model is correct, it demonstrates that positron feedback is indeed a common process in thunderclouds.