The problem of thundercloud electrification is one of the most difficult ones in atmospheric physics. The structure of electric fields in clouds escapes from the detailed in situ measurements; few balloon flights reveal these rather complicated structures. To gain insight into the problem of the charge structure of a thundercloud, we use new key evidence—the fluxes of particles from a thundercloud, the so-called thunderstorm ground enhancements—TGEs. TGEs originate from electron acceleration and multiplication processes in the strong electric fields in the thundercloud, and the intensity and energy spectra of electrons and gamma rays as observed on the Earth’s surface are directly connected with the atmospheric electric field. Discovery of long-lasing TGEs poses new challenges for revealing structures in the thundercloud responsible for hours-extending gamma ray fluxes. In the presented paper, we demonstrate that experimentally measured intensities and energy spectra of the “thundercloud particles” give clues for understanding charge structures embedded in the atmosphere. A rather short “runaway” process above the detector site, which is consistent with the tripole structure of the cloud electrification, is changing to a much less energetic emission that lasts for hours. Measurements of enhanced particle fluxes are accompanied by the simulation experiments with corsika and geant4 codes.

• Received 15 August 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.98.082001