Superbolts of lightning that are up to 1,000 times more intense than ordinary lightning may form because of a particular setup between storm clouds and Earth’s surface
It’s hard to turn away from the dramatic spectacle of a summertime thunderstorm—brilliant flashes of pure electricity followed by a menacing rumble stirring in the clouds. But the typical lightning display pales in comparison with a baffling phenomenon that scientists have dubbed “superbolts”—lightning that can be up to 1,000 times more powerful than regular strikes. Now scientists offer a new potential explanation for how these extreme lightning bolts form.
To investigate the phenomenon, the team matched strike data from the World-Wide Lightning Location Network with data on the properties of the storms that generated the lighting. That finding still didn’t describe a cause-and-effect relationship, however. To explain why distance might play a role, Efraim likens the phenomenon to a capacitor—an electronic component that stores energy in devices such as radios, projectors and refrigerators. “There are two charged plates and some material or air between them,” he explains.
Michael Peterson, an atmospheric scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was not involved in the new study, has suggested that the brightest superbolts viewed from space originate from positively charged cloud-to-ground electrostatic surges, compared with the negatively charged cloud-to-ground events that more frequently cause standard lightning strikes.
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