{"id":371683,"date":"2025-03-24T16:48:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T15:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=371683"},"modified":"2025-03-24T16:48:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T15:48:38","slug":"evidence-found-that-cosmic-rays-spark-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=371683","title":{"rendered":"Evidence Found that Cosmic Rays Spark Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
A lightning bolt over Brazil. Photo credit: Sergio Mazzi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Via SpaceWeather.com<\/a> Every second, almost 50 bolts of lightning zig-zag across the skies of Earth. Despite centuries of study, however, researchers still aren\u2019t sure how the bolts get started. Electric fields in thunderclouds are often too weak to ignite a powerful discharge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research <\/em>titled 3D Radio Frequency Mapping and Polarization Observations Show Lightning Flashes Were Ignited by Cosmic-Ray Showers<\/a>, may have solved the mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe that most lightning flashes in thunderstorms are ignited by cosmic ray showers,\u201d says the study\u2019s lead author Xuan-Min Shao, a senior scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

To investigate the earliest moments of lightning formation, Shao and colleagues built a radio interferometer named \u201cBIMAP-3D<\/a>.\u201d Consisting of an array of 8 antennas in Los Alamos, BIMAP-3D can make three dimensional images of lightning and pinpoint the bolts inside thunderclouds. Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Caption: Colors in the image represent time. Blue traces the earliest moments of the bolt, while red denotes the end.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

his is a lightning bolt from a massive thunderstorm that passed by Los Alamos on July 30, 2022. BIMAP-3D imaged more than 300 bolts during the 90-minute storm. It was a treasure trove of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experimenters realized that some of the bolts they observed happened in parts of the storm where electric fields were too weak to cause the \u201cInitial Breakdown Event\u201d (IBE)\u2013the initial spark that sets the lightning in motion. Modern theories of relativistic electron avalanche couldn\u2019t explain what they saw. Their suspicions soon focused on cosmic rays.

<\/a>Cosmic rays are high energy particles that come from distant supernova explosions and other violent events across the cosmos. They strike Earth\u2019s atmosphere all the time, creating a secondary spray of particles called \u201ccosmic ray showers.\u201d Regular readers are familiar with these showers because we routinely monitor them using Earth to Sky cosmic ray balloons over California.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One of the important things about cosmic ray showers is that they contain antimatter\u2013positrons as well as ordinary electrons. The Los Alamos 3D lightning maps contained strong evidence for positrons. Electrons and positrons are bent in opposite directions by Earth\u2019s magnetic field, so they leave opposite imprints on the lightning\u2019s polarization<\/a>, which BIMAP-3D also measured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took me a while to figure this out,\u201d admits Shao. \u201cI started with electrons only at the beginning, but could not explain the observations. With both electrons and positrons involved, all the observations can be consistently explained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Positrons clinched the case for cosmic rays. \u201cThe fact that a cosmic ray shower provides an ionized path in the cloud that otherwise lacks free electrons strongly favor the inference that most lightning flashes are ignited by cosmic rays,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it\u2019s still unclear how much of Earth\u2019s lightning is sparked by cosmic rays. Many more storms need to be studied with this method to improve the statistics. \u201cThis will require a lot of long-term and good quality lightning data,\u201d Shao says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via\u00a0SpaceWeather.com\u00a0Every second, almost 50 bolts of lightning zig-zag across the skies of Earth. Despite centuries of study, however, researchers still aren\u2019t sure how the bolts get started. Electric fields in thunderclouds are often too weak to ignite a powerful discharge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":371690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691834024,691826674,691820247,691833907,691834022,691834020,691834023],"class_list":{"0":"post-371683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-bimap-3d","9":"tag-cosmic-rays-cr","10":"tag-earths-atmosphere","11":"tag-lightning","12":"tag-los-alamos-national-laboratory-in-new-mexico","13":"tag-spaceweather-com","14":"tag-xuan-min-shao","16":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/0Sergio-Mazzi-Tempestade-SP_1710096138.png?fit=1070%2C1079&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1yGT","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":210552,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=210552","url_meta":{"origin":371683,"position":0},"title":"Cosmic Rays are Decreasing","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"27\/07\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"July 26, 2022:\u00a0Cosmic rays in the atmosphere are rapidly subsiding. In the past year alone, radiation levels in the air high above California have plummeted more than 15%, according to regular launches of cosmic ray balloons by Spaceweather.com and\u00a0Earth to Sky Calculus. 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