Advances in Geosciences www.adv-geosci.net 1680-7340 1680-7359 13 Solar, heliospheric and external geophysical effects on the Earth’s environment: scientific and educational initiatives 2008 10.5194/adgeo-13-37-2008 http://www.adv-geosci.net/13/37/2008/ http://www.adv-geosci.net/13/37/2008/adgeo-13-37-2008.html http://www.adv-geosci.net/13/37/2008/adgeo-13-37-2008.pdf 37 43 2008-09-22 An estimate of the impact of transient luminous events on the atmospheric temperature E. Arnone arnone@fci.unibo.it P. Berg N. F. Arnold B. Christiansen P. Thejll Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark now at: Department of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy We present an order of magnitude estimate of the impact of sprites and other transient luminous events (TLEs) on the atmospheric temperature via ozone changes. To address the effects of expected TLE-ozone changes of at most a few percent, we first study the linearity of the radiatively driven response of a stratosphere-mesosphere model and of a general circulation model (GCM) to a range of uniform climatological ozone perturbations. The study is limited to Northern Hemisphere winter conditions, when planetary wave activity is high and the non linear stratosphere-troposphere coupling can be strong. Throughout most of the middle atmosphere of both models, the radiatively driven temperature response to uniform 5% to 20% ozone perturbations shows a close-to linear relationship with the magnitude of the perturbation. A mid-latitude stratopause ozone perturbation is then imposed as an idealised experiment that mimics local temperature gradients introduced by the latitudinal dependence of TLEs. An unrealistically high 20% magnitude is adopted for the regional ozone perturbation to obtain statistical significance in the model response. 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