A new method reveals more TGFs in the RHESSI data

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Abstract
This letter presents a new search algorithm for identifying Terrestrial Gamma ray Flashes (TGFs) in the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) data. The algorithm has been applied to data from the period 2004–2006 and we have found more than twice as many TGFs as previously reported. The new TGFs follow the same geographical and seasonal variations as the previously reported TGFs. The match percentage between the new TGFs and World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) data is comparable to the RHESSI catalog TGFs. Our results shows that previous searches only identified the most intense events, and that there might be a large population of faint TGFs.
Funding Information
  • Research Council of Norway (184790/V30, 197638/V30)