Via SpaceWeather.com Every second, almost 50 bolts of lightning zig-zag across the skies of Earth. Despite centuries of study, however, researchers still aren’t sure how the bolts get started. Electric fields in thunderclouds are often too weak to ignite a powerful discharge.
A new study just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research titled 3D Radio Frequency Mapping and Polarization Observations Show Lightning Flashes Were Ignited by Cosmic-Ray Showers, may have solved the mystery.
“We believe that most lightning flashes in thunderstorms are ignited by cosmic ray showers,” says the study’s lead author Xuan-Min Shao, a senior scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
To investigate the earliest moments of lightning formation, Shao and colleagues built a radio interferometer named “BIMAP-3D.” Consisting of an array of 8 antennas in Los Alamos, BIMAP-3D can make three dimensional images of lightning and pinpoint the bolts inside thunderclouds. Here’s an example:
This is a lightning bolt from a massive thunderstorm that passed by Los Alamos on July 30, 2022. BIMAP-3D imaged more than 300 bolts during the 90-minute storm. It was a treasure trove of data.
The experimenters realized that some of the bolts they observed happened in parts of the storm where electric fields were too weak to cause the “Initial Breakdown Event” (IBE)–the initial spark that sets the lightning in motion. Modern theories of relativistic electron avalanche couldn’t explain what they saw. Their suspicions soon focused on cosmic rays.
Cosmic rays are high energy particles that come from distant supernova explosions and other violent events across the cosmos. They strike Earth’s atmosphere all the time, creating a secondary spray of particles called “cosmic ray showers.” Regular readers are familiar with these showers because we routinely monitor them using Earth to Sky cosmic ray balloons over California.
One of the important things about cosmic ray showers is that they contain antimatter–positrons as well as ordinary electrons. The Los Alamos 3D lightning maps contained strong evidence for positrons. Electrons and positrons are bent in opposite directions by Earth’s magnetic field, so they leave opposite imprints on the lightning’s polarization, which BIMAP-3D also measured.
“It took me a while to figure this out,” admits Shao. “I started with electrons only at the beginning, but could not explain the observations. With both electrons and positrons involved, all the observations can be consistently explained.”
Positrons clinched the case for cosmic rays. “The fact that a cosmic ray shower provides an ionized path in the cloud that otherwise lacks free electrons strongly favor the inference that most lightning flashes are ignited by cosmic rays,” the authors wrote.
In fact, it’s still unclear how much of Earth’s lightning is sparked by cosmic rays. Many more storms need to be studied with this method to improve the statistics. “This will require a lot of long-term and good quality lightning data,” Shao says.
Feature photo: A lightning bolt over Brazil. Photo credit: Sergio Mazzi
If one gets all Green, this is irrelevant, as Man’s Sins, AKA Pollution, is all that matters in weather. Gaia’s wrath and all that.
“Damn noobs don’t know that AGW sparks lightning.
Where I live we had 3 dozen lightnings per year when I was young.
Now It’s 36 every 12 month.All because of more CO2 ”
Michael Mann
Yumm, grilled carbon.
🤣🤣🤣
Apparently they haven’t gotten the memo yet: Carbon controls all weather phenomena. The science says, so shuddup.
That’s right. We never had lightning until man invented the ICE.
So, and correct me if I’m wrong, clouds and lightning.
There’s another problem for the modelling club. But there isn’t anything the BBC won’t try to spin
Causes of deadly dry-lightning wildfires revealed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62406676
And they are anything but extra terrestrial
Well Dr Roy Spencer did “prove” that aliens cause global warming way back in 2014.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/do-aliens-cause-global-warming-the-data-say-yes/
(I posted that link a few years ago and even though I marked it as a joke spoof and a demonstration of correlation not being causation the Times banned me for spreading mis-information. )
Cosmic rays are scavenged during periods of high sunspot activity. If this research is accurate, then we should see a pattern of more lighting strikes during periods of lower sunspot activity. It should be readily possible to examine the number of lightning strikes during periods of high and low cosmic ray activity–from the cosmic ray balloons data. I’m wondering why this was not mentioned in the paper.
As lightning seeds more clouds by ionising the air and causing nucleation, this does seem to support Svensmark’s theory.
I had the same thought almost. I wondered how long it will be before Willis gets to thinking about it, and we see if there’s any relationship between cosmic ray frequency and lightning frequency.
(hint hint)
He’s in the south Pacific at the moment, so it may be a hile before he work on it.
Great thought…that would be a very interesting study.
Another thing to look at for verification is when and where lightning is occurring. Is there markedly less lightning at mid-day, when cosmic radiation from above would have to get past the sun?
I don’t know if we have monitoring systems in place that are capable of doing systematic lightning detection/counts. It doesn’t sound hard, but it would still take some doing. Does anyone know whether this is a current capacity?
“Electrons and positrons are bent in opposite directions by Earth’s magnetic field, so they leave opposite imprints on the lightning’s polarization.” It feels like a word salad.
Just an artifact of explaining technical ideas in a layman’s language.
I have spent some time watching cosmic ray tracks in Wilson cloud chambers and bubble chambers. Seems pretty clear that those ionization trails would be a good initial pathway for lightning bolts in waiting…
Yes, makes a lot of sense.
Takeaways from this. 1. Earth is a huge cloud chamber. 2. Earth is constantly hit by little bits of antimatter.
One hypothesis I formulated is the electro magnetic field from the sun induces some level of charge build up in the water in clouds.
This is contrary to the childhood explanation that static electricity in clouds occurred when wet air rubbed dry air and the friction caused the static build up.
It is also known that cosmic rays are involved in creating clouds. Early experiments in our cloud chamber demonstrated that.
Can cosmic rays induce lightning? Quite possible. Following this with interest.