Has anisotropy in radiative transport been observed due to the earth's E field?

Question

The electric field a ground level is about 100 V/m under clear conditions, but can exceed 1000 V/m in a thunder storm. The E field should cause a preferred orientation in permanent dipoles such as water (the mutual alignment will aid crystallization and hence condensation). A molecule with an induced dipole could also show alignment with the field. The alignment will be randomized by collisions, but less so at higher altitudes/lower pressures. Emission and absorption of radiation are determined by the direction of the dipole transition moment which is not completely random in an electric field. Are you aware of any experimental data comparing infrared emissions parallel and perpendicular to the earth's surface? Is there any mudulation of the greenhouse effect with changing electric fields?

Answer 1

They have a problem with the valence electrons of the donor atoms in that they emit to many impurities into the receptor atoms.This is a simpler explanation as why it hasn't been under taken in real world simulations.

Answer 2

Your Grad-ness,

I believe you are referring to an electric-field-induced photogalvanic effect. Experiments on these effects are limited to crystalline solids due to the requirement of a fixed relationship between the applied electric field and the constituent atoms. The signal of such an effect will degrade something equivalent to the Curie effect in ferromagnetic materials. In gasses, the equivalent Curie temperature is in the single degree kelvin range--some 300 degrees below atmospheric temperatures. The effect would not be discernable in your target system .

Answer 3

For CO2 it is irrelevant since CO2 doesn't have a permanent dipole (see below).  This really is only a possible effect for water.  For polar gas-phase molecules to align with an electrical field, the dipole strength times the field strength has to be greater than the kT energy contained in the rotational bands (gas phase molecules are rarely found in their ground rotational state).  The idea being that a rotating molecule with a dipole won't align with an induced electrical field unless the potential energy from mislaigning the dipole in the field is greater than the rotational energy.  I don't think that is true for atmospheric temperatures and atmospheric field strengths, at least not in the troposphere where most of the relevant longwave radiative transfer happens.    

That gas-phase molecules, especially light ones, are always rotating is seen by observing distribution of rotational quantum numbers (anything above zero has more rotational energy than the ground state (which itself isn't zero since you can't have zero momentum (a defined value) which would violate Heisenberg))  So, here's some rotational quanta for simple molecular clusters at 250 K (I couldn't find distributions for water vapor in an accessible format):

http://www.pci.unizh.ch/huber/spetopics....

(scan down to Fig. 3)

H2O is a much smaller molecule than the clusters shown there, so the peak for the kT rotational energy will be well away from the y-axis.  So you would need to figure out the rotational energy for the different modes of the water molecule and show that the dipole energy in the field is greater than that at atmospheric temperatures.  I haven't bothered to do it because it isn't important.  

Anyway, scattering from anisotropic media is considered by Chandrasakicanneverspellthisrightkhar although I confess the derivation is out of my depth.  So the answer is yes people have thought about it but no under most conditions it isn't important.