Atmospheric electricity has been intensively studied during the last 30 years after the discovery in 1989 of different forms of upper atmospheric electrical discharges (so–called Transient Luminous Events) triggered by lightning in the troposphere. In spite of the significant number of investigations that led to important new results unveiling how lightning produces a zoo of transient electrical discharges from the upper troposphere to the mesosphere, there is still no clear understanding about how all sort of TLEs – including those that occur inside thunderclouds – can contribute to the chemistry of the atmosphere both at the local and global scale. This review paper aims at presenting a perspective on the TLE atmospheric chemistry research done in the past, in the present as well as to describe some of the challenges that await ahead to find the true scientific importance of the non-equilibrium atmospheric chemistry triggered by TLEs. This review comes to conclude that while the global chemical impact of elves and halos are almost negligible, the large scale chemical impact of sprites, blue jets and blue starters and that of impulsive cloud corona discharges might be non–negligible in terms of their possibly measurable contribution to important greenhouse gases such as ozone and nitrous oxide (N₂O). Being the third strongest greenhouse gas (after carbon dioxide and methane) and by having the ability to deplete ozone, precise determination of atmospheric N₂O sources is of increasing and pressing demand. A new era in atmospheric electricity is just emerging in which dedicated scientific space missions (ISS–LIS, ASIM) together with geostationary lightning sensors (since 2016) and new micro–scale and parameterizations of TLEs in general atmospheric chemistry circulation models will hopefully help to start clarifying the full role of TLEs in the chemistry of the atmosphere.

自1989年发现对流层闪电引发的各种形式的高层大气放电（所谓的瞬时发光事件）以来，过去30年对大气电进行了深入研究。尽管进行了大量的研究，得出了重要的新结果，揭示了闪电如何产生从对流层上层到中层的瞬态放电动物园，但对于各种TLE（包括在内部发生的TLE）的种类，仍然缺乏清楚的了解。雷云–可以在本地和全球范围内促进大气化学。这篇评论文章旨在介绍过去进行的TLE大气化学研究的观点，目前，并描述了要找到由TLE引发的非平衡大气化学的真正科学重要性所面临的一些挑战。这篇综述得出的结论是，尽管精灵和晕圈对全球的化学影响几乎可以忽略不计，但精灵，蓝色射流和蓝色启动剂以及脉冲云电晕放电所产生的大规模化学影响在它们可测量的方面可能是不可忽略的对重要的温室气体，如臭氧和一氧化二氮（N₂ O）。作为第三强的温室气体（仅次于二氧化碳和甲烷），并且由于其具有消耗臭氧的能力，对大气中N ₂ O来源的精确测定面临着越来越大的压力。大气电的新纪元正在出现，专门的科学太空任务（ISS–LIS，ASIM）与对地静止闪电传感器（自2016年起）以及新的微观尺度和TLE在常规大气化学循环模型中的参数化将有望帮助开始阐明TLE在大气化学中的完整作用。