What Comes Out of the Top of a Thunderstorm
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What Comes Out of the Top of a Thunderstorm
Gamma Rays from Severe Weather
May
26, 1999: Springtime in North America often brings severe
weather such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, high winds, and damaging
hail. But just as powerful and fascinating as what comes out
of the bottom of storm clouds are the flashes of gamma-rays that
have been observed coming out of the top.
Right: Nighttime cloud-to-ground
lightning. Credit: C. Clark, NOAA
Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (or TGFs) are short blasts of gamma-ray energy associated with thunderstorms. They only last a few milliseconds - about as long as the sound from a snap of the fingers - and can only be detected by satellites orbiting the Earth. NASA scientists inadvertently discovered TGFs while they were monitoring bursts of gamma-ray energy coming from the depths of space.
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Left: The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, designed to detect gamma ray sources in deep space, has also noticed gamma rays coming from the Earth. Credit: NASA
The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, launched in April 1991,
was designed to observe the universe in gamma rays much as the
Hubble Space Telescope observes in visible light. Because BATSE
observes in all directions, portions of the Earth are inevitably
in its field of view. BATSE accidentally discovered the TGFs
shortly after launch of the satellite.
"The first TGF actually was our second 'trigger' just a
few days after launch," commented Dr. Robert Mallozzi of
the BATSE science team. "The first event we observed was
a real gamma-ray burst in outer space. The second event had a
location coming from the Earth. We thought something was really
wrong."
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for each of these
events."
What these weather images revealed was that each time a TGF
was detected, a massive thunderstorm was in the same vicinity.
Because TGFs seem to only occur in the vicinity of large-scale
thunderstorms, scientists believe the two phenomena are somehow
related.
Left: INSAT, India's weather satellite,
shows thunderclouds around Sri Lanka. The oval represents BATSE's
detection area at the time of the photograph. BATSE scientists
narrowed the detection of a TGF to the gridded region near the
center of the oval. Links to 640x630-pixel,
109K JPG. Credit: Indian Space Research Organization, April
26, 1991.
After eight years of observing, the BATSE team has recorded about
70 TGFs. According to Mallozzi, our view of TGFs is somewhat
limited. The Compton Observatory is the only satellite spacecraft
that has detected TGFs and its orbit follows a restricted path
over the Earth's surface, within 28 degrees from the Equator.
This means a large portion of the Earth is invisible to BATSE.
BATSE would never see TGFs coming off the American Plains, for
instance - an area that often experiences tornadoes and thunderstorms.
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may not be great enough to send BATSE into trigger mode. BATSE
may detect only the very brightest TGFs, just a small sample
of the total number possible. Right: A BATSE graph (with a line of thunderclouds in the background) showing a spike of gamma rays detected from a TGF. TGFs only last for one or two miliseconds. Click on picture to see a 600 x 475 pixel JPG.
But BATSE never was designed to monitor gamma rays originating from Earth. In order to study TGFs in greater detail, we would need a gamma-ray detector designed to view the Earth with a 1 to 2 millisecond trigger. Satellite detectors like BATSE only would see powerful TGFs generated high in the atmosphere. Just as cosmic gamma rays are scattered or absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere before they reach the ground, if thunderstorms generate TGFs close to the ground, those gamma rays would li
kewise be scattered
by the inner atmosphere before they reached outer space.Left: METEOSAT image of thunderclouds off the east coast of Africa and north of Madagascar. BATSE's detection area at the time of the photograph is indicated by the oval. A TGF originated somewhere within the grided area. Links to 640x636-pixel, 66K JPG. Credit: European Space Agency, Feb. 24, 1993.
It is tempting to associate the quick and powerful TGFs with lightning bolts, but scientists say that lightning alone is not energetic enough to generate them. Sometimes "red sprites" and "blue jets" - huge colorful emissions associated with upward-moving lightning - are also seen coming from the tops of massive thunderstorms.
"Pilots had reported seeing flashes of red and blue lights
for years, but no one ever believed them," said Mallozzi.
"It wasn't until recently that we've been able to get pictures
of these phenomena."
Television cameras onboard the Space Shuttle and high-altitude
aircraft have observed some sprites and jets, and many scientists
now believe that these phenomena and TGFs are probably somehow
related. The problem is that no TGF ever has been directly observed
in conjunction with an upward moving sprite or jet.
Right: Red Sprite photographed by
a team at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
The upcoming International
Conference on Atmospheric Electricity in Guntersville, Ala. (June
7 - 11) will offer many explanations for sprites and jets, but
the reason for TGFs remain a mystery. Discovered only recently,
the powerful but elusive TGFs prove there is much more to a thunderstorm
than what meets the eye.
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For more information, please contact: Dr. John M. Horack , Director of Science Communications |
Author: Leslie
Mullen Curator: Bryan Walls NASA Official: John M. Horack |