1. Blue Flashes as Counterparts to Narrow Bipolar Events: the Optical Signal of Shallow In-Cloud Discharges
- Author
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Li, Dongshuai, Luque, Alejandro, Gordillo‐Vázquez, F. J., Liu, Feifan, Lu, Gaopeng, Neubert, Torsten, Chanrion, Olivier, Zhu, Baoyou, Østgaard, Nikolai, Reglero, Víctor, European Research Council, European Commission, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España), National Key Research and Development Program (China), and National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Subjects
Atmospheric Science ,Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Meteorology ,business.industry ,Cloud computing ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,010502 geochemistry & geophysics ,01 natural sciences ,Lightning ,Signal ,Geophysics ,Space and Planetary Science ,13. Climate action ,Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) ,Thunderstorm ,business ,GeneralLiterature_REFERENCE(e.g.,dictionaries,encyclopedias,glossaries) ,Streamer ,Blue luminous events (BLUEs) ,Geology ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences - Abstract
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., Narrow Bipolar Events (NBEs) are powerful radio emissions from thunderstorms, which have been recently associated with blue optical flashes on cloud tops and attributed to extensive streamer electrical discharges named fast breakdown. Combining data obtained from a thunderstorm over South China by the space-based Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor, the Vaisala GLD360 global lightning network and very low frequency/low frequency radio detectors, here we report and analyze for the first time the optical emissions of blue luminous events associated with negative NBEs and located at the top edge of a thundercloud. These emissions are weakly affected by scattering from cloud droplets, allowing us to estimate the source extension and optical energy involved in the process. The optical energy in the 337-nm band emitted by fast breakdown is about 104 J, which involves around 109 streamer initiation events. © 2021. The Authors., This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union H2020 programme/ERC grant agreement 681257. It also received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the M. Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement SAINT 722337. Additionally, this work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, MINECO, under project PID2019-109269RB-C43 and FEDER program. D. Li, A. Luque and F. J. Gordillo-Vázquez acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). F. Liu, G. Lu and B. Zhu are supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1501501) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41775004, 41875006, 42005068, U1938115).
- Published
- 2021