Comment on 'Further evidence for lightning at Venus'

Abstract

In contradiction to the findings of Singh and Russell (1986), the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) electric-field data are not found to provide evidence for either lightning or volcanism at Venus. It is suggested that the noise considered by Singh and Russell to be clustered at low altitudes actually appears frequently at high altitudes. The frequent appearance of the broadband noise in the upper ionosphere indicates that this noise, like that attributed to lightning by Scarf et al. (1980), is actually generated within the ionosphere near the PVO by the solar wind interaction with the ionosphere.