Tag Archive for 'Lightning initiation'

NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

New Study Provides First Precise Explanation for How Lightning Initiates in Nature

Jul 28, 2025 by News Staff

In a new paper, Penn State Professor Victor Pasko and his colleagues described how they determined strong electric fields in thunderclouds accelerate electrons...

Lightning starts with a positive fast discharge, followed by an even faster and more extensive negative discharge observed in 3D; signal polarizations slant from the discharge propagation direction and rotate between the two opposite fast discharges; these features can only be due to a cosmic-ray shower that preconditioned the discharge path and guided the discharge current direction. Image credit: ELG21.

Cosmic-Ray Showers Play Pivotal Role in Triggering Lightning Flashes

Mar 11, 2025 by News Staff

How lightning is started in thunderstorms is poorly known. With a newly-developed 3D mapping and polarization system, physicists at Los Alamos National...

Tilles et al observed a possible new way that lightning forms called fast negative breakdown.

Fast Negative Breakdown Triggers Lightning Flashes, New Observations Show

Apr 12, 2019 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the University of New Hampshire Space Science Center, the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, Earth Networks and NASA’s...