Toward a theory of ball lightning occurring in houses and aircraft

Lowke, J. J.; Heil, Wilfried; Tam, Eugene; Murphy, Anthony B.

doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2020.105532

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 21 publications

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“…During the most of glow events, the NSEF was in the deep negative domain, only 3 from 14 were in the positive domain, see Figure 20. The origin of light glows is under discussion; the possible explanations are intense fluxes of TGE electrons [43,44], ball lightning [45,46], St. Elmo's fires, and geomagnetic disturbances [47]. However, after examining luminous TGE events, along with lightning location maps and NSEF time series, we surmise that an electrical discharge much weaker than a lightning flash could only partially neutralize the charge above, and hence, only partially lower the corresponding potential difference, allowing the electron accelerator to operate and send particle fluxes in the direction of Earth's surface.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient Luminous Events in the Lower Part of the Atmosphere Originated in the Peripheral Regions of a Thunderstorm

et al. 2022

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We present and discuss transient luminous events (TLEs) in the lower atmosphere, observed during large disturbances of the near-surface electric fields (NSEF) and coinciding with large enhancements of the particle fluxes (thunderstorm ground enhancements—TGEs). Despite large distances from the strongest electric field region, the maximum energy of TGE particles on 22 and 25 May 2018 reaches ≈ 40 MeV. Thus, the accelerating electric field reaches ≈ 2.0 keV/cm far from the zone of the strong lightning activity on the periphery of the storm. Light glows appearing simultaneously in the skies may be due to the local charge rearrangement generating a small illuminating discharge without initiating the lightning flash. This type of charge rearrangement does not lower the potential difference in the cloud, allowing the electron accelerator to operate and send particle fluxes in the direction of the earth’s surface.

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