Uncovering the mystery of “heteromorphic red lightning” in the Himalayas

After a mysterious and stunning red lightning strike appeared over the Himalayas in 2022, scientists are finally figuring out what happened.

Red lightning sprites over the Himalayas in 2022.

Spheroidal lightning has long been a mystery among scientists and astronomy enthusiasts, until two amateur astronomers unexpectedly made a new discovery about this phenomenon.

On May 19, 2022, two Chinese amateur astrophotographers Angel An and Shuchang Dong were taking position near Pumoyongcuo Lake (one of three sacred lakes in the southern Tibetan Plateau) with the aim of capturing rare events in the night sky.

However, what they witnessed and photographed next was completely beyond their imagination. More than 100 strange red lightning bolts suddenly appeared and lit up the night sky.

Red lightning bolts danced everywhere, with some of them sprouting secondary branches, and something unprecedented in Asia happened: extremely rare green flashes appeared at the bottom of the ionosphere above the Himalayas. Scientists now call the phenomenon “red sprites.”

Images and videos of mysterious lightning phenomena in the Himalayas quickly spread across global social media platforms.

In a new report published in the March issue of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, scientists analyzed the images to find the origin of this rare natural phenomenon.

Co-author Gaopeng Lu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the red lightning sprite originated from a main lightning bolt carrying a maximum current released within a large convective system and spread across a cloud region with an area of more than 200,000 square kilometers.

The source lightning bolt was followed by a series of red lightning flares that appeared within a convective system that stretched from the Ganges Delta to the southern foothills of the Tibetan Plateau, researchers said.

"This suggests that Himalayan thunderstorms can generate some of the most complex and powerful upper-atmospheric lightning phenomena on Earth," said Dr Lu.

(According to thanhnien.vn)

Source: http://baovinhphuc.com.vn/Multimedia/Images/Id/125915/Kham-pha-bi-an-ve-“set-do-di-hinh”-tren-day-Himalaya