What is 'Super Bolt' that is 1000 times brighter than ordinary lightning?
Lightning that is 100 times brighter than normal lightning is called '
Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) Observations of the Brightest Lightning in the Americas --Peterson --- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres --Wiley Online Library
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD033378
Revisiting the Detection of Optical Lightning Superbolts --Peterson --- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres --Wiley Online Library
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2020JD033377
Scientists Detect'Superbolts' 1,000 Times Brighter Than Typical Lightning Strikes
https://www.sciencealert.com/study-finds-superbolts-shine-1000-times-brighter-than-typical-lightning-strikes
Lightning'Superbolts' Are Real, Two New Studies Confirm | Geophysics, Geoscience | Sci-News.com
http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/geophysics/lightning-superbolts-09083.html
In June 2020, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released an observation record for 'lightning with a total length of 709 km,' which greatly breaks the record of lightning length that has been observed so far. It is reported that the lightning shown in this announcement was a very large-scale one that repainted the world's longest 'lightning with a total length of 321 km' with a double score.
'Lightning length' world record is set, a huge lightning with a total length of 700 km --GIGAZINE
In order to find out where these lightning strikes are likely to occur, the research team of Michael Peterson and Erin Ray, who work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the United States, will be mounted on the meteorological satellite ' GOES-16 '. We observed lightning using the observation device 'Lightning Detection Mapper (GLM) '. For two years from 2018 to 2020, we observed the skies of the Americas from geosynchronous orbit and recorded the light generated by lightning in units of 2 milliseconds (2/1000 seconds).
As a result, 'Super Bolt', which emits 100 times more light than normal lightning, was discovered 2 million times. An example is below. The Super Bolt that occurred in February 2019 drew an eerie pattern in the sky in the southeastern United States in about 7 seconds. It should be noted that, here, when you click, you can see how the super bolt occurs in the animation.
Furthermore, when the research team raised the observation target from '100 times normal lightning' to '1000 times', the
'One lightning discharge observed more than three terawatts of energy, thousands of times more than normal lightning,' Peterson said in a statement. 'Proceeding with an understanding of these extreme phenomena is about lightning. It's important to know the threat. '
Peterson also collaborated with LANL's Matt Kirkland on research on superbolts that occurred around the world, including the Americas. In this study, Peterson and colleagues scrutinized the observation data for the past 12 years accumulated by the nuclear test surveillance satellite ' FORTE ' and extracted lightning that generated more than 100 gigawatts of electricity. We investigated the characteristics of each super bolt by collating with the observation records from the ground.
As a result of this research, it was found that Super Bolt is a lightning that has a different tendency from ordinary lightning. Most of the normal lightning is generated from 'a discharge between a negatively charged cloud and the ground (-CG)', but some of the superbolts are 'a positively charged cloud and the ground'. It is said that it was generated by 'discharge between (+ CG)'.
In a second paper, Peterson et al. 'This study found that a relatively weak superbolt of around 100 gigawatts is generated by both -CG and + CG mechanisms. The most powerful class of superbolts, over 350 gigawatts, was caused by powerful + CG, especially near the coast of Japan. '
Related Posts:
in Science, Posted by log1l_ks