Thermal power and heat energy of cloud-to-ground lightning process

Xuejuan Wang, Ping Yuan, Jianyong Cen, and Simin Xue

Citation: Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016); doi: 10.1063/1.4956442

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4956442
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/php/23/7
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 PHYSICS OF PLASMAS 23, 073502 (2016)

Thermal power and heat energy of cloud-to-ground lightning process

Xuejuan Wang,1 Ping Yuan,1 Jianyong Cen,2 and Simin Xue1
1
Key Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Physics and Functional Materials of Gansu Province,
College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China
2
School of Physics and Information Engineering, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen 041004, China

(Received 11 December 2015; accepted 22 June 2016; published online 8 July 2016)
A cloud-to-ground lightning flash with nine return strokes has been recorded using a high speed slitless
spectrograph and a system composed of a fast antenna and a slow antenna. Based on the spectral data
and the synchronous electric field changes that were caused by the lightning, the electrical conductivity,
the channel radii, the resistance per unit length, the peak current, the thermal power at the instant of
peak current, and the heat energy per unit length during the first 5 ls in the discharge channel have all
been calculated. The results indicate that the channel radii have linear relationships with the peak
current. The thermal power at the peak current time increases with increasing resistance, but
exponential decays with the square of the peak current. Published by AIP Publishing.
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4956442]

I. INTRODUCTION channel are estimated. In addition, the relationships among

some of these parameters are analyzed initially.
Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning is a large-scale and
high-current electrical discharge that is accompanied by a
II. THEORETICAL METHODS
huge release of energy into the atmosphere.1–5 The high-
current pulse (which is called a return stroke) rapidly heats A. Electrical conductivity of the lightning channel
the discharge channel to a peak temperature of near or more
In order to study characteristic parameters of lightning
than 30 000 K. The discharge channel thus forms a plasma
channel, the following assumptions are usually needed:
channel with a pressure of 10 atm or more, which results in
both intense optical radiation and thunder. The return stroke (i) The lightning plasma channel is optically thin.
current typically rises to its peak value in a few microsec- (ii) The channel is in local thermodynamic equilibrium
onds and thereafter decays to its half-peak value in a few (LTE).
tens of microseconds.1,6
The validity of these assumptions has been proved by
The peak power and the input energy of the lightning
Uman9 and Orville10 in detail.
return stroke are two highly important parameters in the
The electrical conductivity represents the charge trans-
fields of lightning protection and research. Jayakumar et al.7
port property in plasma. Under the condition of LTE, and by
estimated the peak electric power of the return stroke based
on the observation of rocket-triggered lightning. Using the means of the perturbative Chapman-Enskog method,
radiative efficiency that was obtained in laboratory-based Capitelli et al.11 obtained the electrical conductivity of air
long-spark experiments, Krider et al.8 derived the peak elec- plasma at the temperature of below 100 000 K11,12
tric power from the measured radiant power of the return 0 11
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 11   q00 q01 q02 
stroke. The thermal power is the same as the electric power
p  q q12 B 
B q10 C
and can be viewed as the input power for the return stroke 2 2
r ¼ 3ne e q11 q12 C ; (1)
2me kT  q21 
q22 @ 20 A
process.7 And few studies on the thermal power of CG light- q q21 q22 
ning with multiple return stokes have been performed based
on the spectral information. where r is the electrical conductivity, ne is the electron den-
Although many works based on various theoretical mod- sity, which is calculated using the Saha equation.2 e and me
els have reported values for the total dissipated energy asso- are the electronic charge and the electron mass, respectively.
ciated with the lightning return stroke, no consensus has T is the channel temperature, k is the Boltzmann constant, and
been reached to date. The various estimates have differed by the qmp elements11,12 are determined by the electron density,
one to two orders of magnitude, as reported by Rakov and the particle density and the collision integral13 of the plasma.
Uman.1 Almost no studies have been performed on the heat For lightning plasma, the temperature is usually around 30
energy of CG lightning with multiple return strokes.
000 K and the channel satisfies the LTE condition, so Eq. (1)
In this paper, using the spectra of a CG lightning flash with
could be used to evaluate its electrical conductivity.14,15
multiple return strokes in combination with the synchronous
electrical field changes information, the electrical conductivity,
B. Radius of the lightning channel
the channel radii, the peak current, the resistance, the thermal
power at the instant of peak current and the heat energy during Under an electrodynamic model16 of lightning, dart
the first 5 ls of the return strokes for the lightning discharge leaders and return strokes are considered as electromagnetic

1070-664X/2016/23(7)/073502/6/$30.00 23, 073502-1 Published by AIP Publishing.

073502-2 Wang et al.
waves that are guided along conducting lightning channels.
Based on this model, the electrostatic energy is rapidly de-
posited into lightning channel by the return stroke so that
heating, molecular dissociation, and ionization occur in the
unexpanded channel.
According to the model,4,16 the radius r of the lightning
channel can be expressed as
  
1 Ebreak 1=2 1=2
r ¼ kq þ lg ðpnatomic Þ
2 Ecloud
 1=2
3 1
 ð1 þ f Þ kT þ sdisso þ f sioniz ; (2)
2 2
where kq is the linear charge density4,16 on the lightning
channel, Ebreak is the electric field required for air break-
down, Ecloud is the electric field under the thundercloud, and
f is the average degree of ionization, with the values of
Ebreak ¼ 2:0  106 V=m,16 Ecloud ¼ 5:0  104 V=m,16 and
f ¼ 0:97.17 natomic is the number density of the atoms in the
unexpanded channel, sdisso ¼ 9:8 eV is the energy for N2
molecule dissociation, and sioniz ¼ 14:5 eV is the energy for
ionization of atomic nitrogen.
C. Resistance per unit length of the channel
The resistance per unit length of the plasma channel, R,
can be calculated using the electrical conductivity and the
channel radius as
1 range, they are mainly from neutral nitrogen and oxygen
R¼
rpr 2
D. Calculation of the return stroke current
Based on the transmission line (TL) model, the relation-
ship between the peak current I and the initial electric field
change peak E is18
2pe0 c2 D
I¼ E;
v
where D is the distance between the lightning channel and
the observation site, c is the speed of light, and v is the return
stroke speed, taking v ¼ 1:5  108 m=s.19,20
E. Thermal power per unit length of the channel
The thermal power P per unit length of the lightning dis-
charge channel can be expressed as
P ¼ I2 R:
III. EXPERIMENTS AND DATA ANALYSIS
A. Experiments
The data presented in this work are taken from an
experiment that was conducted on the Qinghai Plateau in
China in the summer of 2012. The elevation of the observa-
tion site is 2530 m. The slitless spectrograph recording
Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016)
system uses a high-speed video camera with an exposure
time of 333.3 ls (3000 fps). A 600 lines mm1 transmission
grating was placed in front of the objective lens of the cam-
era. The spectra were recorded over a wavelength range
from 400 to 1000 nm.21 The synchronous electric field
change of the lightning was obtained using a combination of
a slow antenna and a fast antenna.
B. Data analysis
The CG lightning flash analyzed here consists of nine
return strokes. The spectrum of every return stroke is cap-
tured. The distance between the CG lightning flash and the
observation site is 1.4 km. The original spectra are digital
pictures of the entire discharge channel outside the cloud.
For quantitative analysis, the best possible positions along
the channel are selected based on the channel shape and the
spectral resolution quality, and the pictures are then trans-
formed into spectrum graphs, which are represented by the
relative intensity distributions of the lines. The spectra of
the nine return strokes measured at a typical position are
shown in Fig. 1. The abscissa represents the wavelength in
nm and the vertical ordinate represents the relative intensity
of the lines. The codes R0 to R8 are used to mark the return
strokes of the lightning, where R0 represents the first return
stroke, and R1 to R8 represent the subsequent return
strokes. As shown in Fig. 1, the spectral lines in the visible
range are mainly from single ionized nitrogen (NII) emis-
sions with higher excitation energies, while in the infrared
(3) (NI and OI) emissions with comparatively low excitation
energies.
Figure 2 shows the electric field changes that are caused
on the ground by this lightning. The abscissa and the vertical
ordinate represent the time and the electric field change,
respectively. The first return stroke R0 and subsequent
strokes R3 and R5 produced strong electric field changes. In
addition, Fig. 1 shows that the intensities of the spectra for
these three strokes are also stronger than those of the other
(4) strokes.
Based on the obtained spectral information, the conduc-
tivity in the discharge channel for each return stroke can be
computed using Eq. (1). By combining the initial electric
field change peak22 from the electric field data with the ob-
servation distance and the discharge channel length, the
channel radius and the peak value of the discharge current
can be calculated using Eqs. (2) and (4). The resistance per
unit length can then be obtained using Eq. (3), and the ther-
mal power per unit length at the instant of peak current can
(5) be found using Eq. (5).
Table I lists the calculated parameters for the nine return
strokes of the lightning flash. In the table, r is the electrical
conductivity, r is the radius of the lightning channel, R is the
resistance per unit length, E is the peak value of the initial
electric field change, which is normalized to 100 km for
comparing with other researches conveniently, I is the peak
current, P is the thermal power per unit channel length at the
time of peak current, and rL is the luminous radius of the
lightning’s optical channel. Because slight changes occur in
073502-3 Wang et al.
the spectral and optical characteristics along the discharge
channel, the parameters listed in Table I are average values
based on the values measured at multiple positions in the
channel.
FIG. 2. Electric field change recorded using (a) slow antenna and (b) fast antenna.
Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016)
FIG. 1. Spectra at a given height for
each of the strokes of the lightning.
Table I shows that the electrical conductivities of the
nine return strokes are in the 1.84  104–2.28  104 S/m
range, with a mean value of 2.06  104 S/m. The first return
stroke R0 has the strongest current, but its electrical conduc-
tivity is not the highest, while the electrical conductivities
for the weak discharge pulses R1 and R2 are both high.
During the lightning process, the time intervals between the
adjacent return strokes are 19, 17, 45, 30, 81, 36, 23, and
53 ms, in the order of occurrence. Because of the relatively
short time intervals between R0 and R1, and between R1 and
R2, the pulsed current reheats the channel before it has
cooled down completely. Therefore, the temperatures and
the resulting electrical conductivities of the channels of R1
and R2 are comparatively high.
The resistance is determined by the electrical conductiv-
ity and the radius of the discharge channel. The mean chan-
nel radius and the resistance per unit length that were
estimated for the nine return strokes are 0.76 cm and 1.32 X/m,
respectively. For comparison, the corresponding values that
were reported by Jayakumar et al.7 for the return strokes in
rocket-triggered lightning at the peak power time were
0.32 cm and 7.5 X/m, respectively. Using a lossy transmis-
sion line approach, Rakov23 estimated these parameters to be
0.3 cm and 3.5 X/m ahead of the return stroke front, and
3 cm and 0.035 X/m behind the return stroke front, respec-
tively. The peak values of initial electric field change nor-
malized to 100 km and current in Table I are all in the usual
range.24–26 The mean values of initial electric field change
peak and peak current are 4.31 V/m and 14.38 kA, respec-
tively. The thermal powers per unit length of the lightning
073502-4 Wang et al. Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016)

TABLE I. Calculated physical parameters for the nine return strokes.

Stroke order r (104 S/m) r (cm) R (X/m) E (V/m) I (KA) P (108 W/m) W (102 J/m) rL (a.u.)

R0 2.13 2.23 0.03 9.78 32.61 0.32 0.53 7.01

R1 2.17 0.16 5.73 1.53 5.11 1.50 2.49 1.57
R2 2.28 0.27 1.92 2.26 7.53 1.09 1.81 1.97
R3 2.05 0.95 0.17 5.38 17.95 0.55 0.92 3.21
R4 2.01 0.46 0.75 3.23 10.76 0.87 1.44 2.59
R5 2.11 1.33 0.09 6.79 22.66 0.44 0.73 3.49
R6 2.02 0.72 0.30 4.42 14.72 0.66 1.10 2.97
R7 1.89 0.30 1.87 2.38 7.93 1.18 1.96 2.50
R8 1.84 0.42 0.98 3.04 10.15 1.01 1.68 3.01

plasma channel at the time of peak current are in the 0.32
 108–1.50  108 W/m range, with a mean value of 0.85
 108 W/m. The peak value of thermal power calculated by
Paras and Rai27 is of the order of 1010 W. Additionally, the
peak electric power value reported by Krider et al.8 for the
initial lightning stroke is 7.8  108 W/m, and estimated by
Jayakumar et al.7 for rocket-triggered lightning is 9.6
 108 W/m. Because the peak value of the power occurs ear-
lier than that of the current,7 the thermal power at the time of
peak current shown in Table I is a little lower than the peak
electric power reported by the references therein.
According to the gas-dynamic model reported by Paxton
et al.,28 the lightning return stroke current increases about
linearly to a peak value of approximately 20 kA in 5 ls and
thereafter exponentially decays within a time of around
50 ls.6 So assuming the return stroke current increases line-
arly with time and comes to its peak value during the first
5 ls, and integrating the thermal power over the initial 5 ls
for each return stroke, so that the heat energy per unit chan-
nel length can be estimated. For comparison, Table II sum-
marizes the existing research results for the energies
associated with lightning return strokes.
Tables I and II show that the heat energy during the first
5 ls of the lightning return strokes obtained in this paper is
in the 0.53  102–2.49  102 J/m range, with a mean value of
1.41  102 J/m. The total dissipated heat energy for 20 KA
current calculated by Paras and Rai27 is of the order of 106 J.
And the total dissipated energies were predicted using vari-
ous gas-dynamic models,28–31 which are all of the order of
103 J/m. Based on the electrodynamic model,4,16,32 the total
dissipated energy per unit length is in the 2  102–1  104 J/m
range. For the return strokes in triggered lightning, Jayakumar
et al.7 estimated that the mean input energy over the first
50 ls or so is in the 103–1  104 J/m range. Krider et al.8
reported a value of 2.3  105 J/m for a single-stroke natural
flash using both field and laboratory-based experimental data,
and Uman33 obtained a range of possible values between 105
and 106 J/m. However, the energies reported by Krider et al.
and Uman probably include the energy that was dissipated
during both the stepped leader and return stroke processes,
and thus may not be directly comparable to other estimates
based on the models that describe the return stroke process
alone.
The luminous properties of the lightning channel are
closely correlated with the current of the discharge process.
Many works have considered the correlation between the
discharge current and the corresponding light intensity.34
The luminous radius of the lightning’s optical channel is rep-
resented by luminous pixels2 in the original pictures, which
can also reflect the channel’s light intensity. In addition, the
real radius of the lightning discharge channel is positively
correlated to the current. The correlations among them for
the nine return strokes are shown in Fig. 3. It is apparent that
there is a good linear relationship between the channel real
radius and the peak current. Because the luminous radius
includes the contributions of light from the surrounding of the
current-carrying channel core, so the relationship between the
luminous radius and the peak current is approximate linear.
Since the luminous radius can directly reflect the luminous in-
tensity of the channel, in practical applications, the strength
of the lightning discharge can be estimated from the channel
luminous intensity via optical observation.
Figure 4 shows the changes in the thermal power at the
time of peak current and the resistance per unit length during
the lightning process for the purpose of further analysis. The
discharges of R0, R3, and R5 are stronger than the other dis-
charges as shown in Fig. 2, in which they have stronger peak
currents and larger channel radii, but they also produce lower
resistances and powers, as shown in Fig. 4. This is consistent
with the conclusions of Jayakumar et al.7 for the return
strokes in rocket-triggered lightning. In addition, the resist-
ance and the thermal power in the channels of R1 and R2 are

TABLE II. Comparison of the energies of lightning return strokes.

Other works, total dissipated energy W (J/m)

Theoretical simulation Semi-empirical estimate

28–31 4,16,32
This work heat energy during the first 5 ls W (J/m) Gas dynamic Electro dynamic Jayakumar7 Krider8 Uman33

0.53–2.49  102 103 2  102–1  104 103–1  104 2.3  105 105–106
073502-5 Wang et al.
FIG. 3. Correlations between the channel radii and the peak current. Rline is
a linear regression parameter.
higher than the corresponding values of the other strokes.
This is associated with the time intervals between these
strokes and their previous return strokes, which were too
short for large numbers of charges to accumulate in the cloud
charge source from the surroundings, meaning that the peak
currents of R1 and R2 are the lowest, and that their channel
radii are also much lower than that of R0.
Figure 5 shows the relationship between the thermal power
per unit length at the instant of peak current and the square of
the peak current. It can be seen that the thermal power expo-
nentially decreases with the square of the peak current
increases. Based on the Saha equation2 and Eqs. (1)–(3) here,
the resistance of the lightning plasma channel is inversely pro-
portional to T3/2. The channel resistance should thus be reduced
rapidly with increasing temperature, so that the heating power
decreases sharply with increasing temperature. That is why the
plasma cannot be heated by the ohmic heating method.35 Also,
lightning discharges with stronger peak currents generally cor-
respond to higher temperatures. Consequently, it can be
deduced that the stronger peak currents and higher temperatures
correspond to lower resistance and weaker thermal power in
the channel. The variation shown in Fig. 5 substantiates this
view. This may also be the reason why the peak value of the
power occurs earlier than that of the current.
In addition, based on the electrodynamic model16 of light-
ning, the electrostatic energy is delivered to the channel by the
FIG. 4. Relationship between the thermal power per unit length at the time
of peak current and resistance per unit length.
Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016)
FIG. 5. Relationship between the thermal power per unit length and the
square of the peak current. R2exponential is R-square value for exponential fit.
leader process, where it is stored around the outside of the chan-
nel; the return stroke subsequently dissipates this stored energy.
The stored electrostatic energy around a charged channel is
thus the source of power for the return stroke, and should pri-
marily be spent on the heating of the channel, and the produc-
tion of the electromagnetic, optical, and acoustic radiations
from the channel. The radiation power is actually the energy
flux density, i.e., it is the corresponding wave intensity. It can
be seen from Table I and Figs. 1 and 2 that a higher return
stroke current corresponds to a stronger electric field change
and higher intensities in the spectra. This not only means that a
stronger peak current will accompany stronger optical and elec-
tromagnetic powers but also means that the values of the resist-
ance and the thermal power will be smaller.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The spectra and the electric field changes, which were
recorded using a slitless spectrograph and a system composed
of a fast antenna and a slow antenna, respectively, have been
applied to the study of the physical parameters of CG lightning
with nine return strokes. The results show that the thermal
powers per unit length of the lightning plasma channel at the
time of peak current are in the 0.32  108–1.50  108 W/m
range with a mean value of 0.85  108 W/m, and the heat ener-
gies over the first 5 ls are in the 0.53  102–2.49  102 J/m
range, with a mean value of 1.41  102 J/m. The mean channel
radius and the resistance per unit channel length are estimated
to be 0.76 cm and 1.32 X/m, respectively. In addition, the
channel radii rise linearly with increasing discharge peak cur-
rent, and the thermal power at the peak current time increases
with increasing resistance, but exponentially decreases with
the square of the peak current.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11475139 and 11365019)
and the Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Program
(Grant No. 1506RJZA119). The authors wish to express their
sincere thanks to the reviewer for his valuable guidance
throughout the whole revised work.
073502-6 Wang et al. Phys. Plasmas 23, 073502 (2016)

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