EGU2020-11487
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-11487
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The mechanism of the origin the NBE (CID) and the initiating event (IE) of lightning due to the volume phase wave of EAS-RREA synchronous ignition of streamer flashes

Alexander Kostinskiy1, Thomas Marshall2, and Maribeth Stolzenburg2
Alexander Kostinskiy et al.
  • 1National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics, Russian Federation (kostinsky@gmail.com)
  • 2University of Mississippi, Department of Physics and Astronomy, USA (marshall@phy.olemiss.edu)

In an article by Kostinskiy et al. (2019) proposed the mechanism of the origin and development of lightning from initiating event to initial breakdown pulses (termed the Mechanism). The Mechanism assumes initiation occurs in a region of a thundercloud of 1 km3 with electric field E > 0.4 MV/(m∙atm), which contains, because of turbulence, numerous small “Eth-volumes” of 0.001-0.0001 m3 with E ≥ 3 MV/(m∙atm). The Mechanism allows for lightning initiation by two observed types of initiating events: a high power VHF event called an NBE (narrow bipolar event or CID), or a weak VHF event. According to the Mechanism, both types of initiating events are caused by a group of relativistic runaway electron avalanche particles passing through many of the Eth-volumes, thereby causing the nearly simultaneous launching of many positive streamer flashes, Kostinskiy et al. (2019).

In this report, based on the Meek’s criterion for the initiation of streamers (Raizer, 1991) at different heights of lightning initiation and taking into account the number of all background electrons, positrons and photons of cosmic rays with energy ε < 1012 eV (Sato, 2015) crossing Eth-volumes sizes of Eth-volumes are specified (3∙10-4-3∙10-5 m3). The report also showed that synchronous injection with a high probability of relativistic electrons into such small Eth-volumes requires of relativistic runaway electrons avalanches to be initiated by extensive air showers with energies ε > 1015 eV, which would supply (injected) 105-107 secondary electrons into a turbulent region of a thundercloud with a strong electric field.

References

Kostinskiy, A. Yu., Marshall, T.C., Stolzenburg, M. (2019), The Mechanism of the Origin and Development of Lightning from Initiating Event to Initial Breakdown Pulses arXiv:1906.01033

Raizer Yu. (1991), Gas Discharge Physics, Springer-Verlag, 449 p.

Sato T. (2015), Analytical Model for Estimating Terrestrial Cosmic Ray Fluxes Nearly Anytime and Anywhere in the World: Extension of PARMA/EXPACS, PLOS ONE, 10(12): e0144679.

How to cite: Kostinskiy, A., Marshall, T., and Stolzenburg, M.: The mechanism of the origin the NBE (CID) and the initiating event (IE) of lightning due to the volume phase wave of EAS-RREA synchronous ignition of streamer flashes , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-11487, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-11487, 2020

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