Many people are afraid of a terrible natural phenomenon - a thunderstorm. This usually happens when the sun closes with gloomy clouds, a terrible thunder and a heavy rain.
Of course, you should be afraid of lightning, because it can even kill or cause a fire. This has been known for a long time, and therefore came up with various means to protect against lightning and thunder (for example, metal poles).
What happens up there and where does the thunder come from? And how does lightning arise?
Storm clouds
Thunderclouds are usually huge. They reach several kilometers in height. Visually it is not visible how inside these rattlesnakes everything boils and boils. These are violent streams of air, including droplets of water, moving with great speed from the bottom up and vice versa.
The highest part of these clouds reaches -40 degrees in temperature, and water droplets falling into this part of the cloud freeze.
On the origin of thunderclouds
Before we know where the thunder and lightning come from, how does it arise, we will briefly describe how thunderclouds form.
Most of these phenomena occur not over the water surface of the planet, but over the continents. In addition, thunderclouds intensively form over continents of tropical latitudes, where at the surface of the earth the air (unlike air above the water surface) warms up very much and rises quickly up.
Usually, on the slopes of different hills, a similar upward flow of heated air is formed, which draws in moist air from vast areas of the earth's surface and lifts it up.
Thus, the so-called cumulus clouds are formed, turning into thunderclouds, described just above.
Now let’s clarify what lightning is, where does it come from?
Lightning and thunder
Chunks of ice form from those frozen droplets, which also move in the clouds at great speed, colliding, collapsing and charging with electricity. Those icicles that are lighter and smaller remain at the top, and those larger are melting, going down, turning back into droplets of water.
Thus, two electrical charges arise in a thundercloud. In the upper part is negative, in the bottom - positive. When different charges meet, a powerful electric discharge occurs and lightning occurs. Where it comes from, it became clear. And then what happens? A flash of lightning instantly warms up and expands the air around it. The latter heats up so much that an explosion effect occurs. This is the thunder that scares all life on earth.
It turns out that all these are manifestations of atmospheric electricity. Then the next question arises as to where the latter comes from, and in such large quantities. And where does it go?
Ionosphere
What is lightning, where does it come from, figured out. Now a little about the processes that conserve the charge of the Earth.
Scientists have found that the Earth’s charge is generally small and amounts to only 500,000 coulombs (like 2 car batteries). Then where does that negative charge that are carried by lightning closer to the Earth’s surface disappear?
Usually, in clear weather, the Earth is slowly discharged (constantly a weak current passes through the entire atmosphere between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface). Although air is considered an insulator, it has a small fraction of ions, which allows current to exist in the volume of the entire atmosphere. Due to this, although slowly, but a negative charge is transferred from the earth's surface to a height. Therefore, the volume of the total charge of the Earth always remains unchanged.
Where does ball lightning come from?
Today, the most common opinion is that ball lightning is a special type of charge in the form of a ball, moreover, it exists for a rather long time and moves along an unpredictable trajectory.
There is no unified theory of the occurrence of this phenomenon today. There are many hypotheses, but so far no one has received recognition among scientists.
Usually, as eyewitnesses testify, ball lightning occurs in a thunderstorm or storm. But there are cases of its occurrence in sunny weather. More often it is generated by ordinary lightning, sometimes it appears and comes down from the clouds, and less often it appears unexpectedly in the air or can even come out of some object (pillar, tree).
Some interesting facts
Where did the thunderstorm and lightning come from, we found out. Now a little about the curious facts regarding the above natural phenomena.
1. Each year, the Earth experiences approximately 25 million lightning flashes.
2. Lightning has an average length of approximately 2.5 km. There are discharges extending in the atmosphere for 20 km.
3. There is a belief that lightning cannot strike twice in one place. In reality, this is not so. The results of the analysis (on a geographical map) of the places of lightning strikes over the previous few years show that lightning can strike at the same place several times.
So we found out what lightning is, where it comes from.
Thunderstorms form as a result of the most complex atmospheric phenomena of a planetary scale.
Every second, approximately 50 lightning flashes occur on planet Earth.