Premium
On the mechanism of blue jet formation and propagation
Author(s) -
Raizer Y. P.,
Milikh G. M.,
Shneider M. N.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2006gl027697
Subject(s) - jet (fluid) , physics , mechanics , meteorology , atmosphere (unit) , computational physics
A new model of blue jets is proposed. A blue jet consists of an upward propagating leader whose top part is seen on photos as a “trunk of a tree”, and is capped at the top side of the leader by its streamer zone. The latter is shown as tall and narrow branches of “the tree”. It is shown that blue jet streamers can be sustained by relatively moderate cloud charges due to upward transfer of the high thundercloud potential by the leader. The streamer length is estimated along with the height at which the streamers can reach the ionosphere. The propagation of a streamer in the atmosphere of exponentially falling density N is computed. It is found that the critical external field E S required for unlimited streamer growth satisfies the similarity law E S /N ∼ const. Shortcomings of the existing blue jet models are discussed.