Mesoscale Observations of Lightning from Space Shuttle

Abstract

Motion pictures have been taken at night by astronauts on the space shuttle showing lightning discharges that spread horizontally at speeds of 105 m·s−1 for distances over 60 km. Tape recordings have been made of the accompanying optical pulses detected with a photocell optical system. The observations show that lightning is often a mesoscale phenomenon that can convey large amounts of electric charge to earth from an extensive cloud system via a cloud-to-ground discharge.