Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On April 29, 2020, a storm hit the southern United States, and a super lightning ripped through the sky and was recorded by GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites.

A superlightning source that stretches 768km across two states in the United States: the NOAA is the longest lightning on record, stretching from the central coast of Texas to southern Mississippi and is estimated to be 768km long, equivalent to the distance from Hubei Province to Zhejiang Province.

Location and propagation distance of super lightning: AMS this kind of lightning is called supercell lightning (Megaflashes). Lightning in most storms can travel up to a few kilometers, while supercell lightning is dozens of times farther than ordinary lightning.

To generate super lightning, first, you need a large number of charged clouds, and secondly, you need to discharge at a rate slow enough to allow single lightning to span long distances.

Supercell lightning map source: WMO is usually a mesoscale convective system, referred to as MCS (Mesoscale Convective System), which is an important system that causes disastrous weather such as rainstorm, hail, thunderstorm, gale and tornado.

The reason why it is called mesoscale is that the horizontal scale is relatively medium compared with other convective systems, with a horizontal scale of 2000-2500 km.

Generally speaking, the most active areas of mesoscale convective systems are generally located in the lower reaches of the Great Mountains, and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River in China are similar to the mid-latitude plains of North America, so these places are particularly prone to rainstorms and floods.

Before the longest lightning, the longest lightning recorded by the satellite occurred in 2018 at a distance of 709 kilometers in southern Brazil. These super lightning are known only when they are recorded by weather satellites.

GOES-16 Meteorological Satellite Image Source: why can't the lightning monitoring network on the ground accurately record all the data of lightning in wikipedia?

A ground Lightning Monitoring instrument Source: the principle of NOAA ground lightning detection is simply to record the sound waves (thunder) generated by lightning shock waves and locate them through electromagnetic signals in the radio frequency band caused by lightning.

Although these station networks can accurately locate and count the lightning occurring near them, and even measure lightning spectra and radio signals, because of their location limitations, it is difficult for them to give images of lightning distribution around the world. let alone record the exact distance and duration of lightning.

Ground lightning monitoring image source: NOAA, but the weather satellite in the sky is different. First of all, its monitoring principle is different from that on the ground, and the data monitored by satellites in space are mainly flash signals. It is monitored from space and can cover a larger area of the earth.

If there were a little more monitoring satellites, it would be no problem to continuously monitor almost all lightning activity around the world in real time. Only then did the accurate data of Super Lightning be recorded.

Infrared / visible images of lightning density and rate synthesized by satellites spanning the furthest distance. China's geostationary-orbiting weather satellite Fengyun-4 can capture the trajectory of lightning. On February 13, 2017, Fengyun 4 recorded the process of a severe thunderstorm in Australia, which lasted for 6 hours, and fully recorded the generation, development and end of lightning.

Since it is possible to monitor and record the lightning that spans the furthest distance, the lightning with the longest duration is naturally recorded.

On June 18, 2020, the GOES weather satellite recorded super lightning over northern Uruguay and Argentina with a duration of 17.1 seconds.

Location map source of lightning occurrence with the longest duration recorded: AMS

The longest duration of lightning, satellite synthesis of lightning density and rate of infrared / visible light images. This time is more than enough for ordinary people to run a 100-meter race, and the Flash per capita is not a dream.

This article is from the official Wechat account: bring Science Home (ID:steamforkids), written by Su Chengyu

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