Different Types of Corona Discharges Associated With High‐Altitude Positive Narrow Bipolar Events Nearby Cloud Top

Abstract

Blue LUminous Events (BLUEs) are special Transient Luminous Events associated with thunderclouds that radiate intense near-ultraviolet (UV) blue optical emissions dominated by 337 nm with weak or absent signals in the atomic oxygen line at 777.4 nm. They have also been termed as blue corona discharges in the recent studies (

Observation of Blue Corona Discharges and Cloud Microphysics in the Top of Thunderstorm Cells in Cyclone Fani

“…We assumed that the particle radius and number density determined by CALIPSO represent the cloud microphysical properties relevant to the blue corona discharges in β region. We used the mean free path that we previously estimated, Λ = 3 m, based on the first‐hitting‐time (FHT) model (Li et al., 2023; Soler et al., 2020) in Equation , and fitted the parameters A and L to the optical pulses, with L being the depth of the blue corona discharges in the cloud.…”

“…Other possibilities include cloud‐top pixies , which appear on the overshooting tops along with the gnomes (Lyons et al., 2003), or kilometer‐scale surface blue discharges or blue glimpses that appear to “dance” on the upper layer of the cloud (Chanrion et al., 2017). The slower blue discharges with longer rise times, located deeper inside the cloud, are more complex and may be related to “in‐cloud streamer corona discharges” (Gordillo‐Vázquez & Pérez‐Invernón, 2021) or to the burst of streamers at the onset of lightning leader formation (Li et al., 2022b, 2023; López et al., 2022). However, leader initiation was not observed in our study.…”

“…However, the low number of matched events suggests that optical measurements from the ISS may be more sensitive than the current radio observations for detection of blue corona discharges/NBEs when these occur in the upper regions of clouds. It is also possible that some of the discharges may be related to streamer activity at the onset of lightning leader formation (Kostinskiy et al, 2020;Li et al, 2022bLi et al, , 2023López et al, 2022;Lyu et al, 2019;Marshall et al, 2019;Rison et al, 2016), or that the radio signals are weak due to their horizontal orientation (Li et al, 2022b(Li et al, , 2023.…”

“…They are likely to occur independently from other lightning discharges within tens of milliseconds or at the onset of lightning leader formation (Kostinskiy et al., 2020; López et al., 2022; Lyu et al., 2019; Marshall et al., 2019; Rison et al., 2016). The relationship between blue corona discharges and NBEs is still under investigation (Li et al., 2022b, 2023).…”

Detailed Modeling and Evaluation of the Potential Impact of Blue Jet on the Atmospheric Chemistry

“…Stratospheric ozone thus impacts global climate through atmospheric radiative budget processes and chemical equilibrium. Blue jet (BJ) is one of the transient luminous events (e.g., Chuang & Chen, 2022; Li et al., 2023; Tomicic et al., 2023; Xu et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2020), which occurring at the altitude of the stratospheric ozone layer, therefore, the chemical impact of BJs on stratospheric chemistry is important. The physical structure of BJ includes the streamer zone and a leader channel (e.g., Raizer et al., 2010).…”