Credit: Radboud University
From the University of Groningen:
Exploding stars help to understand thunderclouds on Earth
How is lightning initiated in thunderclouds? This is difficult to answer – how do you measure electric fields inside large, dangerously charged clouds? It was discovered, more or less by coincidence, that cosmic rays provide suitable probes to measure electric fields within thunderclouds. This surprising finding is published in Physical Review Letters on April 24th. The measurements were performed with the LOFAR radio telescope located in the Netherlands.
‘We used to throw away LOFAR measurements taken during thunderstorms. They were too messy.’ says astronomer Pim Schellart. ‘Well, we didn’t actually throw them away of course, we just didn’t analyze them.’ Schellart, who completed his PhD in March this year at Radboud University in Nijmegen and is supervised by Prof. Heino Falcke, is interested in cosmic rays. These high-energy particles, originating from exploding stars and other astrophysical sources, continuously bombard Earth from space.
High in the atmosphere these particles strike atmospheric molecules and create ‘showers’ of elementary particles. These showers can also be measured from the radio emission that is generated when their constituent particles are deflected by the magnetic field of the Earth. The radio emission also gives information about the original particles. These measurements are routinely conducted with LOFAR at ASTRON in Dwingeloo, but not during thunderstorms.
Modeling
That changed when the data were examined in a collaborative effort with astrophysicist Gia Trinh, Prof. Olaf Scholten from the University of Groningen and lightning expert Ute Ebert from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam.
‘We modeled how the electric field in thunderstorms can explain the different measurements. This worked very well. How the radio emission changes gives us a lot of information about the electric fields in thunderstorms. We could even determine the strength of the electric field at a certain height in the cloud.’ says Schellart.
This field can be as strong as 50 kV/m. This translates into a voltage of hundreds of millions of volts over a distance of multiple kilometers: a thundercloud contains enormous amounts of energy.
Dangerous charge
Lightning is a highly unpredictable natural phenomenon that inflicts damage to infrastructure and claims victims around the world. This new method to measure electric fields in thunderclouds will contribute to a better understanding and ultimately better predictions of lightning activity. Current measurement methods from planes, balloons or little rockets are dangerous and too localized. Most importantly the presence of the measurement equipment influences the measurements. Cosmic rays probe the thunderclouds from top to bottom. Moving at almost the speed of light they provide a near instantaneous ‘picture’ of the electric fields in the cloud. Moreover, they are created by nature and are freely available.
‘This research is an exemplary form of interdisciplinary collaboration between astronomers, particle physicists and geophysicists’, says Heino Falcke. ‘We hope to develop the model further to ultimately answer the question: how is lightning initiated within thunderclouds?’
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Lightning in super slow motion
Upward lightning
ferdberple,
I am surprised there is not more discussion on this site about the relationship between electricity and weather / climate.
Modern cosmology seems to see gravity as the fundamental creative force, to the amazing exclusion of electrified plasma. They’ll talk about “gases” at millions of degrees, which of course is no longer gas.
They’ll talk about shock waves from explosions generating high energy radiation, but never acceleration or charged particles in double layers in plasma.
They’ll talk about magnetic fields everywhere, but never about the currents that necessarily generate them.
And they’ll invent black holes and neutron stars and dark matter and dark energy to plug all the gaping holes in their gravity models.
Is it not similar with weather and climate? All models seem to attempt to capture only temperature- and gravity-driven mechanisms. Yet there is little discussion about electric driving forces. Electricity, if it is discussed at all, is always just an effect, never a cause.
Your comments?
In the 1980’s when I was heavily into amateur and shortwave radio I accidentally witnessed an unusual phenomenon on the air and subsequently witnessed it on several other occasions. I was tuning the bands one afternoon with thunderstorms probably within 10km. Around 21MHz I heard what sounded like a fast pulsing sound, very broadband, which increased in pulse rate over about 20 seconds to a high pitched buzz which culminated in the typical “crash” sound of a lightning discharge as heard on an AM radio. It then went silent for anything from a few seconds to a few minutes until it repeated again. I was using a loaded 1/4 wave vertical over a corrugated iron roof at a height of about eight metres. Yes, probably a bit unwise to be using the equipment in that situation but both it and I survived without incident.
well Max the supreme deities of long ago always had a thunder bolt at hand. Gravity was not so important to them.
It’s very encouraging to see so many here interested in this topic. The days of looking at the Earth as an isolated body in space unaffected by plasma activity from solar or cosmic sources are coming to a close as awareness builds of electric-magnetic influences on our weather and climate – Electric Weather – and the wide variety of electric weather effects, lightning being one such effect.
ems “lightnin’ rod” news
ABSTRACT
This Letter reports reliable satellite data in the period of 1980–2007 covering two full 11-yr cosmic ray (CR) cycles, clearly showing the correlation between CRs and ozone depletion, especially the polar ozone loss (hole) over Antarctica. The results provide strong evidence of the physical mechanism that the CR-driven electron-induced reaction of halogenated molecules plays the dominant role in causing the ozone hole. Moreover, this mechanism predicts one of the severest ozone losses in 2008–2009 and probably another large hole around 2019–2020, according to the 11-yr CR cycle.
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.118501
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_SH_2008.gif
Magnetic storm and a record level of lava in Kilauea.
http://s24.postimg.org/8xl0ocjuc/Wulkan_Kilauea_Hawaje_Poziom_lawy_2015_04_24.jpg
Was it Charles P Stenmetz who was asked if it was true that lightning never strikes twice in the same place?
HIs response, as I recall, was yes, it WAS true, because there is nothing left to hit after lightning strikes the first time.
🙂
Typo
Steinmetz
Silly of course, many objects, like the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower are hit many times a year.
And then there is this guy:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/texan-man-struck-lightning-day/story?id=20707448
Boy, do not keep up with the research, and you miss stuff like this:
NASA has now has proof that thunderstorms produce not only gamma rays, but antimatter:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/fermi-thunderstorms.html