Unraveling The Mysteries Of "Gigantic Jet" Lightning

Sometimes lightning shoots up from the clouds instead of zapping down.
author
DR. ALFREDO CARPINETI
Senior Staff Writer & Space Correspondent

Aug 5, 2022 10:25 AM



A red sprite and blue jet seen on top of a thunderstorm. Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/A. Smith

Lightning from thunderstorms doesn’t just strike the ground. Sometimes it goes up, forming a rarely seen type of electrical discharge known as a "gigantic jet" that connects the top of the clouds to the lower edge of space. Observations of a single one of these gigantic jets has challenged some expectations about this phenomenon but has also provided a better understanding of how these Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) form.

As reported in Science Advances, the team was able to study one of these jets in three dimensions based on a combination of satellite data, radio waves, and radar. But the starting point of the investigation was a photograph taken by a citizen scientist of a jet in Oklahoma.

“Kevin Palivec [the photographer] has a low-light camera in Central Texas that he sometimes randomly operates, and he had captured this a couple of years ago,” lead author Levi Boggs, from the Georgia Tech Research Institute, told The Washinton Post. The picture “was kind of sitting around. I was told about it and I decided to investigate a little bit.”



Obsevration of ta gigantic jet. Image Credit Kevin Palivec/Boggs et al. 2022

The jet started from an area on the cloud top that measured around 50 by 50 kilometers (31 by 31 miles) at about 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles) altitude. It then sparked upwards, reaching the ionosphere, the portion of our planet’s atmosphere that extends from about 48 kilometers (30 miles) above the surface to the edge of space at about 965 km (600 mi).

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/unraveling-the-mysteries-of-gigantic-jet-lightning-64769