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Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes pose a challenge to current theories of lightning, especially with the discovery of the clear signatures of antimatter produced in lightning. [ 26 ] It has been discovered in the past 15 years that among the processes of lightning is some mechanism capable of generating gamma rays , which escape the atmosphere and ...
Direct strike: lightning directly hits the person Orifice entry: may occur if lightning strike occurs near the head entering eyes, ears and mouth to flow internally; Side splash: lightning jumps from the location of primary strike to a nearby person; Contact injury: injury that occurs when a person is touching an object on the pathway of lightning
In general, CG lightning flashes account for only 25% of all total lightning flashes worldwide. Since the base of a thunderstorm is usually negatively charged, this is where most CG lightning originates. This region is typically at the elevation where freezing occurs within the cloud. Freezing, combined with collisions between ice and water ...
Sheet lightning is cloud-to-cloud lightning that exhibits a diffuse brightening of the surface of a cloud, caused by the actual discharge path being hidden or too far away. The lightning itself cannot be seen by the spectator, so it appears as only a flash, or a sheet of light. The lightning may be too far away to discern individual flashes.
Crown flash is a rarely observed meteorological phenomenon caused by the effect of atmospheric electrical fluctuations on the alignment of ice crystals. It has been described as "the brightening of a thunderhead crown followed by the appearance of aurora-like streamers emanating into the clear atmosphere". [ 1 ]
"Total lightning" is both the generally invisible (in daylight) IC flashes that stay within the cloud as well as the generally visible CG flashes that can be seen extending from cloud base to ground. Because most of the total lightning is from IC flashes, this ability to quantify storm intensity occurs mostly through detection of IC discharges.
The flash of a lightning strike and resulting thunder occur at roughly the same time. But light travels 300,000 km/sec, almost a million times the speed of sound. Sound travels at the slower speed of about 340 m/sec (depending on the temperature), so the flash of lightning is seen before thunder is heard. A method to determine the distance ...
Global map of lightning frequency--strikes/km 2 /yr. The high lightning areas are on land located in the tropics. Areas with almost no lightning are the Arctic and Antarctic, closely followed by the oceans which have only 0.1 to 1 strikes/km 2 /yr. The map on the right shows that lightning is not distributed evenly around the planet. [5]