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Positive lightning is less common than negative lightning and on average makes up less than 5% of all lightning strikes. [10] A bolt from the blue lightning strike which appears to initiate from the clear, but [clarification needed] the turbulent sky above the anvil cloud and drive a bolt of plasma through the cloud directly to the ground. They ...
Pockels (1897) estimated lightning current intensity by analyzing lightning flashes in basalt (c. 1900) [12] and studying the left-over magnetic fields caused by lightning. [13] Discoveries about the electrification of the atmosphere via sensitive electrical instruments and ideas on how the Earth's negative charge is maintained were developed ...
A lightning strike or lightning bolt is a lightning event in which an electric discharge takes place between the atmosphere and the ground. Most originate in a cumulonimbus cloud and terminate on the ground, called cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning.
There are about 40,000 thunderstorms per day across the globe, generating roughly 100 lightning strikes per second, [1] which can be thought to charge the Earth like a battery. Thunderstorms generate an electrical potential difference between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere, mainly by means of lightning returning current to ground ...
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning [1] and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. [2] Relatively weak thunderstorms are sometimes called thundershowers. [3] Thunderstorms occur in a type of cloud known as a cumulonimbus. [4]
In the United States, lightning is especially common in Florida, which is considered the deadliest state for lightning strikes in the country. [4] This is due to high moisture content in the lower atmosphere and high surface temperature, which produces strong sea breezes along the Florida coast. [5] As a result, heat lightning is often seen ...
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]
The troposphere is the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. It extends from Earth's surface to an average height of about 12 km (7.5 mi; 39,000 ft), although this altitude varies from about 9 km (5.6 mi; 30,000 ft) at the geographic poles to 17 km (11 mi; 56,000 ft) at the Equator, [17] with some variation due