The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) - Isle of Wight Section (Solent Network) presents:

Atmospheric Electricity and High Energy Particles
Professor Giles Harrison, MA PhD ScD CPhys FRMetS
Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK

The existence of an electric field in the atmosphere, even in fair weather conditions, has been known since the mid-eighteenth century, soon after the defining work of Benjamin Franklin. Understanding its origin provoked the experimental ingenuity of well-known physicists such as Lord Kelvin and the Nobel Prize winner C.T.R. Wilson, who devised the concept of a global electrical circuit. One aspect of the importance of the earth’s atmospheric electrical system is that it provides a route to couple solar variations into the lower regions of the atmosphere, indeed right down to the surface. This is because solar activity influences galactic cosmic rays, which are responsible for the ionisation permitting current flow between the upper and lower atmosphere. Atmospheric electricity measurements at a single point can therefore combine the effects of local atmospheric changes with those originating far away. The vertical “global circuit” current also passes through layer clouds, and its electrical effects in the clouds have now been directly observed with ballooncarried instrumentation developed at Reading.

Our 2015-16 Programme Card is available from: http://theiet.org/solent (then Isle of Wight link)

Please register via the 'Book Tickets' link provided, not the telephone number. (Venue room is 'The Sail Loft')