Mysterious blue lightning flashes

Weather of Arabia - Researchers have picked up through the International Space Station a mysterious type of lightning called blue jet lightning ( Blue Jets ). When thunderstorm clouds send lightning strikes across the sky or hit the ground, another phenomenon sometimes occurs from the top of the clouds so that a column of blue light appears It is heading into space, as these colorful flashes can extend up to 48 kilometers into the stratosphere.

These blue lightning flashes from Earth can only be seen in rare circumstances because they are short and usually obscured by clouds, but in 2019, instruments on board the International Space Station ( ISS ) were able to record five blue flashes and a jet of blue light blasting off toward space from a storm cloud. thunderstorms near Nauru (Nauru Island) in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where each flash lasted between 10 and 20 milliseconds, reaching the height of 51 kilometers above sea level.

These observations formed the basis of a new research paper published in Nature that may help explain why these blue flashes appeared, as an initial understanding of this phenomenon indicates an interaction between the top of a positively charged thundercloud, with the negatively charged layer above The cloud directly, so the equation of opposite charges causes a brief discharge of static electricity that appears in the form of a bright blue flash, as occurs in natural lightning when opposite charges meet in clouds close to each other, or between the cloud and the ground, and the electrical discharge occurs.

The flashes of blue lightning jet over Nauru were captured by optical cameras, photometers, an X-ray detector and gamma ray installed on the outer surface of the International Space Station, where the researchers reported that the blue flashes were accompanied by flashes of ultraviolet light called ELVES .

The importance of improving our understanding of this phenomenon and other uncommon phenomena that occur from time to time, lies in the effects of these phenomena that can disrupt the radio waves used in communications, and these phenomena of the upper atmosphere can also affect greenhouse gas concentrations and the ozone layer.