Mountaintop Gamma Ray Observations of Three Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes at the Säntis Tower, Switzerland With Coincident Radio Waveforms

We report on the mountain top observation of three terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) that occurred during the summer storm season of 2021. To our knowledge, these are the first TGFs observed in a mountaintop environment and the first published European TGFs observed from the ground. A gamma-ray sensitive detector was located at the base of the Säntis Tower in Switzerland and observed three unique TGF events with coincident radio sferic data characteristic of TGFs seen from space. We will show an example of a “slow pulse” radio signature (Cummer et al., 2011, https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL048099; Lu et al., 2011, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010JA016141; Pu et al., 2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082743; Pu et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089427), a −EIP (Lyu et al., 2016, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL070154; Lyu et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093627; Wada et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031730), and a double peak TGF associated with an extraordinarily powerful and complicated positive-polarity sferic, where each TGF peak is possibly preceded by a short burst of stepped leader emission.

Duke Scholars

Author Steven A. Cummer Electrical and Computer Engineering