1. Five Special Days at Vostok and Concordia (Antarctica)
Earle Williams and Anirban Guha
Gary Burns and Brian Tinsley
Workshop on the Global Electric Circuit
Mitzpe Ramon, Israel
February 6-9, 2017

2. Monitoring the Global Electrical Circuit from Land Stations
For the most part, this endeavor has been a history of failure Reasons: Pollution/space charge in continental boundary layer Convective overturn of the boundary layer Variable conductivity In short: No stable medium for monitoring

3. Improvements in Antarctica
Pros: Stable medium
Two-station comparisons
Cons: Katabatic winds
Blowing ice and snow
Electrode effect
Progress: Burns et al. (2005, 2012)
Kniveton et al. (2008)

4. Antarctica

5. Mission Instruments Field Mill

7. Rutledge and Carey on
Bathurst Is. for MCTEX in 1995
The study of “Hector”

8. Five Special Days at Vostok and Concordia
Stacked plots of electric field measurements at Vostok and Concordia for five consecutive days in March (Burns et al., 2017)

9. Why should the current source for the global circuit follow surface air temperature?
In all climates, water vapor increases with increasing temperature (Clausius-Clapeyron relationship)  
+ 7% per degree C at 0°C
            
In the present climate, Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) increases with temperature
In a warmer climate, CAPE is predicted to scale with Clausius-Clapeyron (Romps, 2016)
Vapor Pressure
Temperature (°C)

10. Access to global temperature on short time scales
For global climate studies, monthly means are the norm
For global reanalysis, surface temperature measurements are generally not ingested
For surface skin temperature and MSU observations, satellite sampling from LEO is inadequate for global hourly analysis

11. Stations available for surface air temperature measurement on March 5, 2009

12. Number of surface stations involved in the global averaging over five days

13. Global temperature variation for five special days (March 5-9, 2009)

14. Electric field at Vostok and Concordia and global temperature for five special days
Stacked plots of electric field measurements at Vostok and Concordia for five consecutive days in March 2009.
3-hourly global temperature variation.

15. Conclusions
Globally representative measurements of the DC global circuit can be achieved in Antarctica
Calculation of global mean temperature is facilitated by access to all quality-checked surface thermometers at
3-hourly time scales
The DC global circuit is responsive to temperature on both the diurnal time scale and the five day time scale
In five days the mean global temperature can increase by the same amount (~1C) it has increased in a century in global warming