A captivating image, featured on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, reveals a spectacular scene: gigantic jets soaring from a thunderstorm towards the Himalayas in China and Bhutan. The composite image captures four long, powerful jets occurring within minutes of each other. These phenomena, only documented in this century, are lightning discharges between certain thunderstorms and the Earth’s ionosphere, the electrically charged layer of the atmosphere high above.
These gigantic jets are a unique form of lightning, distinct from the more familiar cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. Their lower sections resemble blue jets, which are lightning strikes that occur above storm clouds, while their upper parts share similarities with red sprites, another type of high-altitude lightning.
Gigantic jets are electrical discharge phenomena that originate within thunderstorms but differ significantly from blue jets and sprites. They begin as intracloud flashes between the thundercloud’s middle negative and upper positive charge regions. A negatively charged leader moves upward from the cloud towards the ionosphere. Unlike blue jets, which start between the upper positive charge region and a negative screening layer, gigantic jets reach much higher altitudes, terminating at around 90 km (55 miles) above the Earth’s surface.
While the exact cause of gigantic jets remains a subject of ongoing research, it is evident that these jets play a crucial role in balancing electrical charge across various layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. NASA suggests that one effective method to observe gigantic jets is by observing intense thunderstorms from a vantage point with clear visibility. The next time you witness a powerful thunderstorm, look up – you might just catch a glimpse of these extraordinary electrical discharges illuminating the sky.
