On the Emergence Mechanism of Carrot Sprites

Malagón-Romero, A.; Teunissen, Jannis; Stenbaek‐Nielsen, H. C.; McHarg, M. G.; Ebert, Ute; Luque, Alejandro

doi:10.1029/2019gl085776

Cited by 21 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This region has low conductivity, and the electrons are converted to negative ions which intensifies the electric field and maximises photon production. 32 From our analysis, we found that the altitude of maximum brightness ranges between 53.5 km and 84.1 km. The average maximum brightness altitude was found to be about 69 km with a standard deviation of 6.2 km.…”

Section: Distribution Of the Altitudes Of Maximum Sprite Brightnessmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…The altitudes of maximum brightness for column and carrot sprites are in agreement with those reported in the literature. 15,31,32 The altitude of maximum brightness also does not depend on the time of the event. From the literature, the altitude of maximum brightness region lies between 65 km and 85 km.…”

Section: Distribution Of the Altitudes Of Maximum Sprite Brightnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The altitude of sprites observed over South Africa

et al. 2021

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Sprites are mesospheric optical emissions that are mostly produced by large, positive cloud-to-ground lightning discharges. Sprites appear in different morphologies such as carrot, jellyfish and column, and are typically in the altitude range of ~40–100 km above the Earth’s surface. Sprites are a subset of transient luminous events and they contribute to the global electric circuit. South Africa has large convective thunderstorms, which typically occur in the summer months of every year. Peak current, time and geographical position of lightning strokes were obtained from the South African Weather Service. Sprite observations were recorded in South Africa for the first time on 11 January 2016 from Sutherland in the Northern Cape using a night-vision television camera from the South African National Space Agency’s Optical Space Research laboratory. We report the first estimates of the top altitude, and the altitude of maximum brightness, of 48 sprites over South Africa. We found that the average top altitude and the altitude of maximum brightness of sprites are approximately 84.3 km and 69 km, respectively, which is consistent with estimates made elsewhere. We also found a moderately high positive and a weak positive correlation between the top altitude and the altitude of maximum brightness, respectively, of sprites and the lightning stroke charge moment change.

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Section: Distribution Of the Altitudes Of Maximum Sprite Brightnessmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Distribution Of the Altitudes Of Maximum Sprite Brightnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The altitude of sprites observed over South Africa

et al. 2021

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“…Kochkin et al (2012) captured images where a positive streamer corona triggers negative streamers as it approaches an electrode. The same group found positive streamers emerging from the channels of preceding negative streamers (Kochkin et al, 2014) and a similar process explains the shape of carrot sprites in the upper atmosphere (Malagón-Romero et al, 2020). In the numerical simulations of Malagón-Romero et al (2020), similar currents flow through the channels of the downward and upward streamers because they are connected through electrically conducting regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Secondary Fast Breakdown in Narrow Bipolar Events

Luque

Gordillo‐Vázquez

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Narrow bipolar events (NBEs), sometimes also known as narrow bipolar pulses (NBPs), are impulsive and powerful radio emissions from intracloud discharges characterized by intense very high frequency (VHF) radiation, fast propagation speed and short-duration bipolar sferic waveforms in the Low Frequency band (Smith et al., 1999(Smith et al., , 2002(Smith et al., , 2004. NBEs have received great attention since first discovered in the 1980s (Le Vine, 1980;Willett et al., 1989) but their physical mechanism, possibly related to how lightning is initiated inside thunderstorms, remains poorly understood.Over the past decades, several physical mechanisms have been put forward to describe NBEs. One proposal argued that NBEs are caused by energetic particles from cosmic ray air showers triggering relativistic runaway electron avalanches (RREA), a model known as the relativistic runaway electron avalanches-extensive air showers (RREA-EAS) model or as the Runaway Breakdown (RB)-EAS model (e.g.

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“…( 2012 ) captured images where a positive streamer corona triggers negative streamers as it approaches an electrode. The same group found positive streamers emerging from the channels of preceding negative streamers (Kochkin et al., 2014 ) and a similar process explains the shape of carrot sprites in the upper atmosphere (Malagón‐Romero et al., 2020 ). In the numerical simulations of Malagón‐Romero et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…In the numerical simulations of Malagón‐Romero et al. ( 2020 ), similar currents flow through the channels of the downward and upward streamers because they are connected through electrically conducting regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secondary Fast Breakdown in Narrow Bipolar Events

Luque

Gordillo‐Vázquez

et al. 2022

Geophysical Research Letters

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The physical mechanism of Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) has been studied for decades but it still holds many mysteries. Recent observations indicate that the fast breakdown discharges that produce NBEs sometimes contain a secondary fast breakdown that propagates back in the opposite direction but this has not been fully addressed so far in electromagnetic models. In this study, we investigate fast breakdown using different approaches that employ a Modified Transmission Line with Exponential decay (MTLE) model and propose a new model, named “rebounding MTLE model,” which reproduces the secondary fast breakdown current in NBEs. The model provides new insights into the physics of the fast breakdown mechanism.

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On the Emergence Mechanism of Carrot Sprites

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

The altitude of sprites observed over South Africa

The altitude of sprites observed over South Africa

Secondary Fast Breakdown in Narrow Bipolar Events

Secondary Fast Breakdown in Narrow Bipolar Events

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