Modeling the Electrical Characteristics of the Global Electric Circuit

Earth's global electric circuit (GEC) embodies the electrical pathways by which currents flow from electrified clouds to the ionosphere and return through fair weather regions to the earth's surface. To investigate this pathway, an analytic model based on others' previous work has been developed to produce global estimates of atmospheric currents, electric fields, and potential distributions of the GEC. The atmosphere between the ground and the ionosphere is composed of complex current sources and conductivity distributions. In the global electric circuit, lightning events act as current generators maintaining the potential difference between the earth and ionosphere. An analytic solution to Poisson's equation was applied to the GEC, allowing for a steady-state calculation of global distributions in potential, electric fields and currents for specified conductivity distributions and current sources. The global distribution of current sources provided on a monthly basis by a recently developed empirical model of Wilson currents. Analytic representations of global conductivities are implemented that include large-scale changes in the galactic cosmic ray flux. A novel numeric solver for Poisson's equation was also developed to enable analysis of more complex distributions of conductivity, i.e. cloud and aerosol effects. These models allow one to determine how different lightning and conductivity distributions impact the electrical characteristics of the GEC.