高空短暫發光現象由雲間閃電或雲對地閃電所引發，與閃電極性的關係在過去幾十年間已有相當的研究。例如，超過99%的紅色精靈由正極性雲對地閃電所觸發，而淘氣精靈目前仍沒定論。全球性閃電與高空短暫發光現象的放電極性統計可以讓我們了解閃電極性對於發生率的影響。由於目前並沒有單一資料來源可以進行這樣的研究，我們使用安裝於中央大學鹿林山天文台的極低頻波段磁場量測資料結合全球閃電定位網路資料庫(WWLLN)和ISUAL任務的高空短暫發光現象事件資料庫，進行閃電與高空短暫發光現象之放電極性全球分佈統計。
在本研究中，共分析了2010 年3 月至2011 年2 月區間中的閃電與TLEs
事件，藉由本論文所發展的演算法快速而正確的自極低頻波段磁場中解析出
放電極性。分析結果顯示在全球分佈上，距離台灣3000 公里內範圍內，閃電極性偵測率可以達到70%以上，在此範圍內，負閃電的數量約為全部閃電的90%。超過3000 公里範圍外，閃電的極性偵測率隨距離遞減至10%左右，而負閃電的比例下降至50%左右，這樣的結果也顯示了正閃電的平均能量較負閃電高，這也為最近的研究結果提供了佐證。
高空短電發光現象的統計結果顯示，資料期間內所觀測的紅色精靈大於95%都是由正極性閃電所引發，可判斷極性的48 個紅色精靈中僅有一個事件為負閃電相關，這和之前的研究結果相符。令人驚訝的是大於95%的淘氣精
靈都是由負極性閃電所引發，這和先前的研究不同，主要的原因是因為ISUAL 近年根據電波觀測結果做了時間修正，把儀器觸發時間的精確度由25毫秒修正到3 毫秒以內，使得誤判的比例大幅降低。在閃電與高空短暫現象的季節分佈中，可以觀察到TLEs 現象隨著閃電數量增加而增加，兩者之間的發生率存在著正相關，但是閃電的極性沒有顯著的季節性變化，這樣的結果也顯示高空短暫發光現象的分佈主要受閃電的密度與能量影響，放電極性的空間與時間差異極小，影響不大。

Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) are triggered by inter-cloud lightning (IC) or cloud to ground (CG) lightning. The polarity of lightning and TLEs have been studied for decades. For example, more than 99% of sprites are initiated by +CG lightning, but the polarity of elve-associated lightning is still unclear now. We can explore the connection between TLEs occurrence and lightning polarity by investigating the global distribution of the discharge polarity. Since there is no single-source data providing all necessary information for this study, multiple sources including the magnetic field measurements at extremely low frequency (ELF) band-pass, the database of the World Wild Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) and the ISUAL TLEs list are used to explore the discharge polarities of lightning and TLEs.
The polarities of the lightning and TLE events from Mar. 2010 to Feb. 2011 are investigated by an efficient algorithm developed in this study. The results show that the successful detection of lightning polarity can be up to 70% within 3000 km from Taiwan. In this region, -CG lightning accounts for approximately 90% of the total polarity-resolved events. Moreover, the polarity detection rate decays along the distance, as well as the ratio of –CG lightning also drops to about 50%. This result implies that +CG discharge is averagely more energetic than –CG events.
The in-depth analysis exhibits that the observed sprite in this period are dominantly triggered by +CG events (95%), only one -CG sprite out of 48 is confirmed and this result is comparable with previous findings. It is surprisingly founded that elves are majorly initiated by –CG lightning (95%), and this result is new and confident because the accuracy of ISUAL onboard trigger time is improved by other ELF study, and the uncertainty of ISUAL event trigger time shrinks from 25 milliseconds to 3 milliseconds. In addition, it is revealed that the density of TLE is proportional to lightning occurrence in the seasonal distribution of lightning and TLEs, but the polarity of lightning seems no significant seasonal variation is observed. This result also suggests that the distribution of TLEs is mainly governed by lightning density and energy, and less correlated with polarity.

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