Upward Electrical Discharges From Thunderstorm Tops

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

445

APRIL 2003AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

|

F

AFFILIATIONS:

L

YONS

AND

N

ELSON

—FMA Research, Inc., FortCollins, Colorado; A

RMSTRONG

—Mission Research Corporation,Nashua, New Hampshire; P

ASKO

—The Pennsylvania State University,University Park, Pennsylvania; S

TANLEY

—Los Alamos NationalLaboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:

Walter A. Lyons, CCM, FMAResearch, Inc., Yucca Ridge Field Station, 46050 Weld County Road13, Fort Collins, CO 80524E-mail: Walyons@frii.comDOI: 10.1175/BAMS-84-4-445

In final form 19 November 2002©2003 American Meteorological Society

or over 100 years, persistent eyewitness reports inthe scientific literature have recounted a variety of brief atmospheric electrical phenomena abovethunderstorms (Lyons et al. 2000). The startled ob-servers, not possessing a technical vocabulary withwhich to report their observations, used terms as var-ied as “rocket lightning,” “cloud-to-stratospherelightning,” “upward lightning,” and even “cloud-to-space lightning” (Fig. 1). Absent hard documenta-tion, the atmospheric electricity community gavelittle credence to such anecdotal reports, even oneoriginating with a Nobel Prize winner in physics(Wilson 1956). On the night of 6 July 1989, whiletesting a low-light television camera (LLTV) for anupcoming rocket launch, the late Prof. John R.Winckler of the University of Minnesota made a mostserendipitous observation. Replay of the video taperevealed two frames showing brilliant columns of light extending far into the stratosphere above dis-tant thunderstorms (Franz et al. 1990). This singleobservation has energized specialists in scientific dis-ciplines as diverse as space physics, radio science, at-mospheric electricity, atmospheric acoustics, andchemistry as well as aerospace safety, to explore thelinkages between tropospheric lightning and themiddle and upper atmosphere. Given concerns forpossible impacts on aerospace vehicles, the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) im-mediately initiated a review of video tapes from thespace shuttle payload bay LLTV employed to imagemesoscale lightning events. Over a dozen events ap-pearing to match Winckler’s observation were un-covered (Boeck et al. 1998). On 7 July 1993, the firstnight of observing at the Yucca Ridge Field Stationnear Fort Collins, Colorado, Lyons (1994) docu-mented over 240 events. Evidently they were not arare occurrence. The very next night, LLTV camerasonboard the NASA DC-8 detected huge flashes above

UPWARD ELECTRICALDISCHARGES FROMTHUNDERSTORM TOPS

BY

W

ALTER

A. L

YONS

, CCM, T

HOMAS

E. N

ELSON

, R

USSELL

A. A

RMSTRONG

,V

ICTOR

P. P

ASKO

,

AND

M

ARK

A. S

TANLEY

Mesospheric lightning-related sprites and elves, not attached to their parent thunderstorm’s tops, are being joined by a family of upward electrical discharges,including blue jets, emerging directly from thunderstorm tops.

446

APRIL 2003

|

a large thunderstorm complex in Iowa (Sentman andWescott 1993).With the rush of discoveries, confusion soon aroseregarding scientific terminology. Winckler and hiscolleagues initially termed their discovery a “cloud-to-stratosphere (CS) flash.” Press reports frequently referred to “upward lightning” or “cloud-to-spacelightning.” But little was known of the underlyingphysics of these transient illuminations. Was it “light-ning?” In which direction did it really propagate? Didit connect the cloud top with “space”? To avoid as-signing a name that might later need revision, DavisSentman of the University of Alaska proposed call-ing them “sprites” (mysterious and fleeting charac-ters populating Shakespeare’s

The Tempest

).Sentman’s team also provided the first color imagesshowing sprites to be primarily red with blue high-lights on their lower extremities (Sentman et al. 1995),so the term red sprites has become widely used.Sprites, often as bright as an intense auroa, can onsome occasions be seen with the naked eye. They ex-tend from near the base of the ionosphere (~90 km),with tendrils sometimes reaching below 40 km, butthere is no direct evidence of a conductive currentpath to the cloud tops below. Sprites appear withinseveral to perhaps 200 ms after a powerful positivepolarity cloud-to-ground lightning discharge (+CG).A variety of theories arose to explain the observations(Rowland 1998). Current thinking favors sprites ascomplex conventional electric breakdown in the rar-efied middle atmosphere triggered by thunderstormelectric fields of electrostatic origin produced by thetransfer of large amounts of charge to ground, follow-ing the basic suggestion of Wilson (1925). Most spritesstart with small initiating zones around 70–75 kmfollowed by complex networks of streamerlike dis-charges propagating first downward and then upward(Stanley et al. 1999).Not all thunderstorms produce sprites, includingmany with substantial numbers of +CGs. Evidencebegan to accumulate that +CGs occurring with thestratiform regions of large mesoscale convective sys-tems (MCSs) were preferred sprite producers (Lyons1996). The Severe Thunderstorm Electrification andPrecipitation Study (STEPS), conducted on the highplains of Colorado and Kansas during summer 2000,further documented that sprites most commonly occurabove the stratiform precipitation region of MCS largerthan ~20,000 km

2

. Conditions there appear to favorthe formation of unusual +CGs producing extremely large charge moment changes, the product of the chargelowered to ground and the altitude from which it wasremoved. As inferred from extremely low frequency (ELF) sferics signatures, charge moments of the orderof 1000 C km, more than an order of magnitude largerthan “normal” lightning flashes, are produced by sprite-parent +CGs (Williams 1998; Huang et al. 1999;Cummer and Stanley 1999; Hu et al. 2002). It is esti-mated, based on ELF data, that several sprites occureach minute on a worldwide basis (Huang et al. 1999).Another phenomenon, called elves—toroidal-shaped luminous regions near the base of the iono-sphere—were confirmed in 1995 by coordinated ob-servations at Yucca Ridge (Fukunishi et al. 1996).Theoretical modeling by scientists from StanfordUniversity had suggested the electromagnetic pulsesfrom some CGs should cause brief (< 1 ms), outwardly expanding glows between 80 and 100 km (Inan et al.1996). The impetus for this research was a 1990 LLTVobservation from the space shuttle in which there wasan apparent transient brightening of the “airglowlayer” at 85 km subsequent to a lightning flash inthe clouds below (Boeck et al. 1998). Elves, while hav-ing a peak optical output of ~1000 kR, are so brief (< 0.5 ms) they are not visible to the human eye andare difficult to detect even with LLTVs.During 1994, aircraft-mounted LLTVs searchingfor sprites made a serendipitous discovery reminis-cent of reports of “rocket lightning” reported from theground (MacKenzie and Toynbee 1886) and from thespace shuttle LLTV (Boeck et al. 1998). Tenuousfountains of blue light, appearing as grainy and dif-

F

IG

. 1. The morphology of lightning-related, middleatmospheric transient luminous events including redsprites, blue jets, and elves. Also indicated is an addi-tional type of discharge from cumulonimbus tops thatmay be a true “cloud-to-stratosphere” lightning or sim-ply another manifestation of the blue jet phenomenon.Adapted from Lyons et al. (2000), reprinted with per-mission of the American Geophysical Union.

447

APRIL 2003AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

|

fuse, trumpet-shaped ejections spurted upward fromelectrically active thunderstorm tops at speeds>10

5

m s

−

1

, reaching heights of 40 km or more(Wescott et al. 1995). These rare events appear notto be directly associated with any specific CG light-ning flash. Lasting only 100–200 ms, though relatively intense (~500–1000 kR), blue jets are difficult to seewith the naked eye at night even under ideal viewingconditions. Jets typically appear to be several kilome-ters wide at their base, becoming wider with height.Also noted were blue “starters,” blue jets which wouldattain no more than a few kilometers of vertical ex-tent (Wescott et al. 1996). We note that extensiveanalyses of the video indicate that theoptical emissionsof blue jets/starters are confined exclusively to bluewavelengths. Thus, no “white” component of the dis-charge is anticipated. Though blue jets propagateupward from the storm top into the stratosphere, their video appearance does not resemble “lightning” inany normal usage of the word.Several competing theories of blue jets includeboth conventional and runaway breakdown in thestratosphere above cumulonimbus cloud tops(Sukhorukov and Stubbe 1998). Recent theoreticalcontributions suggest the streamer zone of a conven-tional positive leader as the underlying physicalmechanism of blue jets (Petrov and Petrova 1999;Pasko et al. 1999, 2001). No theory has yet accountedfor all blue jet characteristics.Are there additional phenomena to be uncovered,such as a true “cloud to stratosphere” upward light-ning discharge? This paper reviews a growing num-ber of film, video, and eyewitness observations thatare clearly neither sprites nor elves, and which alsodepart from our current understanding of the phe-nomenology of blue jets. It may be that blue jets ex-press themselves over a wider variety of shapes, mor-phologies, and optical intensities than the originalobservations and models would imply.

SOME PUZZLING OBSERVATIONS.

Since1989, more than 10,000 images of sprites, elves, andblue jets have been obtained by various researchteams. Even after acknowledging their wide variety of shapes and sizes, especially of sprites, we do know thatthese phenomena exhibit a generally recognizablemorphology. Numerous reports that simply do not fitour current understanding of the phenomenology of these events (Vaughan and Vonnegut 1989; Lyonsand Williams 1993) include

•

“vertical lightning bolts were extending from thetops of the clouds . . . to an altitude of approxi-mately 120,000 feet . . . they were generally straightcompared to most lightning bolts . . .”

•

“at least ten bolts of lightning went up a verticalblue shaft of light that would form an instant be-fore the lightning bolt emerged . . .”

•

“a beam, purple in color . . . then a normal light-ning flash extended upwards at this point . . . afterwhich the discharge assumed a shape similar toroots in a tree in an inverted position . . .”

•

“a brilliant, blue-white spire . . .”

•

“ an ionized glow around an arrow-straight fingercore . . .”

•

“a lightning spike”These above observations simply do not describesprites, elves, blue jets, or blue starters. Eyewitnesseshave, however, reported what appear to be blue jets.Heavner (2000) compiled numerous sightings, in-cluding that of a pilot flying at 45,000 ft above a very active thunderstorm at night who commented,

I saw a blue ejection from the top of a storm cloudin the shape of an inverted tear drop (narrow end

UPWARD LIGHTNING—UPCLOSE

In 1973, Ronald Williams, a NASA U-2 pilot, wasflying above a typhoon in the Gulf of Tonkin at analtitude of about 20 km. He reported,

I approached a vigorous, convective turret close tomy altitude that was illuminated from within byfrequent lightning. The cloud had not yet formed ananvil. I was surprised to see . . . a bright lightningdischarge, white-yellow in color, that came directlyout of the center of the cloud at its apex andextended vertically upwards far above my altitude.The discharge was very nearly straight, like a beamof light, showing no tortuosity or branching. Itsduration was greater than an ordinary lightningflash, perhaps as much as five seconds.(Vonnegut 1980)

This account was one of many collected by thelate Bernard Vonnegut of the State University of New York at Albany. Vonnegut, along with hiscolleague, O. H. (Skeet) Vaughan Jr. of the NASAMarshall Space Flight Center, labored for twodecades to assemble the numerous anecdotalreports of lightning-related phenomena aboveclouds. When the first “hard” evidence of a sprite was captured on video tape by Jack Winckler andhis students in 1989, there was already a rich troveof observational material available to facilitateplacing this startling new observation in context.

of 00

Leave a Comment