What are the red sprites and blue jets?

red sprites and blue jets, flashes of light that occur above thunderstorms and that are associated with normal lightning in the thundercloud below. Red sprites tend to form almost instantaneously over a broad region between 40 and 90 km (about 25 to 55 miles) in altitude. …

What is a red sprite weather?

Sprites or red sprites are large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorm clouds, or cumulonimbus, giving rise to a quite varied range of visual shapes flickering in the night sky. They are usually triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground.

What are blue jets meteorology?

Blue jets are optical ejections from the top of the electrically active core regions of thunderstorms, but not directly associated with cloud-to-ground lightning.

What is the difference between a Sprite and a blue jet and an elf?

“Blue jets” and “elves” are also associated with thunderstorms, but not in the same way as “sprites.” Whereas sprites are directly related to cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and form far above a thundercloud, blue jets (source: University of Albany) “emerge directly from the top of a thundercloud,…..

Why do I see sprites?

Lightning sprites – also known as red sprites – happen in Earth’s mesosphere, up to 50 miles (80 km) high in the sky. Sprites are often triggered by a strong, positive bolt of ordinary lightning near the ground. They’re thought to be a balancing mechanism that the atmosphere uses to dispense charges vertically.

What are elves and sprites?

Both sprites (which stands for — get ready for it —Stratospheric/mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification) and elves (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) are a type of transient luminous event, or TLE.

Why are blue jets blue?

Blue jets zip upward from thunderclouds into the stratosphere, reaching altitudes up to about 50 kilometers in less than a second. Whereas ordinary lightning excites a medley of gases in the lower atmosphere to glow white, blue jets excite mostly stratospheric nitrogen to create their signature blue hue.

Why are sprites red?

The main upper portion of sprites are red in color, while the lower tendrils go from red to blue with decreasing altitude (Sentman et al. 1995). These colors are caused by the excitation of molecular nitrogen (the brightest lines in the spectrum are in the ranges 650-680nm and 750-780nm).

Why are lightning sprites red?

What causes red sprites?

Red sprites are thought to be caused by a rare but intense form of lightning called positive lightning. Whereas most cloud-to-ground lightning has a negative electric charge, positive lightning has a positive charge. The sprites’ red color likely comes from those ions smashing into molecules in the air.

How common are red sprites?

Red sprites happen when the parent thunderstorm unleashes a strong positive lightning bolt. Positive lightning is very powerful, typically 2x to 10x more powerful than typical negative lightning. It is also rare, with less than 5% of all lightning bolts being positive.

What is the difference between blue jets and red sprites?

Blue jets may be bright, but their discovery was preceded by a longer-lasting, redder phenomenon: red sprites. A variety of transient lightning phenomena, including red sprites and blue jets, which are the most…

What are blue jets?

Blue jets may be bright, but their discovery was preceded by a longer-lasting, redder phenomenon: red sprites. commonly seen ones other than the normal, below-cloud lightning.

What does a Red Sprite look like?

Red sprites have a reddish colour on low-light television records, and blue tendrils have been observed trailing beneath them. Blue jets propagate out of the tops of thunderclouds at surprisingly low velocities (roughly 100 km, or 60 miles, per second) in the form of narrow cones of light that are blue in colour.

How is White Lightning different from sprites and Jets?

Regular white lightning is different from sprites and jets in several key ways. Whereas regular lightning shoots between electrically charged air, clouds, and the ground during storms, sprites and jets start in different places in the sky, and move toward space. Their distinctive hues also set them apart.