What is a blue jet?

Mysterious sky gnomes: why are they so hard to understand and catch?

Blue jets, or "dwarves" is one of the most rare and poorly understood phenomena. They represent the ascending electric discharges, starting at the tops of the clouds. They are not always associated with lightning and occasionally appear in the atmosphere suddenly and unexpectedly.

Look "dwarves" as a narrow inverted cone. The blue color of jets is based on the fact that they appear on top, which remains relatively high pressure. The same color have the lightning, corona discharge on the wires and spark discharges. "Dwarf" starts from the top edge of the cloud, and can rise to a height of 40 kilometers. The jets are moving with speeds from 10 to 100 km/s.

A special type of jet that is of interest to researchers, giant jets. They start not very far from the earth's surface and can rise to a height of 90 km, and the Interest of geophysicists for giant jets is reinforced by the fact that these discharges go straight from the troposphere to the ionosphere.

The theory of the origin of jets is still in the Bud, due to the short period of life "the gnome" - only a fraction of a second. It is likely that, by their nature, blue jets close to the luminous lightning channel in the initial stage of development. This may explain why the appearance of jets not associated with lightning: he is by himself and there is a zipper. However, there are suggestions that the appearance of a jet is like the appearance of the discharge inside thundercloud, which energizes the lightning channel. In this case, to understand the nature of "dwarfs" will be much harder.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»