A team of American scientists has captured the image of a huge lightning bolt that, instead of hitting the ground, went up into the clouds . The phenomenon occurred during the tropical storm Cristóbal, in 2008, and the ascending ray reached a height of 64 kilometers, according to the researchers in an article published in the journal Nature Geoscience . These rare weather events (only five have been recorded since 2001) are known as " giant jets ," and they discharge as much electricity into the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) as lightning strikes the earth.
Professor Steven Cummer, from Duke University, assures that he captured the image of the event by chance, because he had pointed his camera towards the sky, over the storm , hoping to photograph another phenomenon known as sprites , which consists of blue or red electrical discharges. that occur above the clouds towards the ionosphere. The scientist now plans to install a high-speed, low-light camera to capture color images of the giant jets to analyze their chemical processes and temperatures.
According to Brad Smull, program director of the Division of Atmospheric Sciences of the National Science Foundation of the United States, "the confirmation of a visible electrical discharge that extends from the top of a storm towards the edge of the ionosphere offers very important information. on the processes of the electrical circuit of the Earth ".
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