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Wednesday, March 20, 2002

A single frame from Mark Stanley's night scope enhanced video depicts the upward propogating Hybrid Blue Jet lightning observed by Stanley last September in Puerto Rico. The lightning is the bright vertical formation running from the very bottom of the frame, which represents the top of the thundercloud. The green color in the freeze-frame is due to the properties of the night scope lens. Photo courtesy of Mark Stanley, Space and Atmospheric Sciences (NIS-1)

Observation of unique lightning earns Nature cover, leads researcher to join the Lab

The researchers were on the rooftop of a LIDAR laboratory near the world-famous radiotelescope at the Arecibo Observatory, setting up video gear in order to observe a relatively small thunderstorm cell in the hope that it would produce what lightning researchers call "transient luminous events" in the atmosphere above. The night seemed perfect, but little did they know how perfect it would turn out to be.

The thunderstorm, offshore and about 200 kilometers away, turned out to produce a much larger than normal amount of lightning strikes that night, as well as something completely new.

As Stanley and Pasko were looking north out over the ocean, adjusting their night-vision equipped Sony video camera, they saw it with their own eyes: a very special Blue Jet. A Blue Jet is a type of lightning that begins in the top of a thundercloud and with a flash leaps upward into the stratosphere. But this was no average Blue Jet. This one did something no Blue Jet had ever done before; it reached all the way up to the ionosphere.

"It started high in the cloud and then very rapidly shot upward, first one spike, then another, eventually fanning out, finger-like, flashing twice and leaving hot spots wherever it had reached," Stanley said. "It was the most fascinating color; I can't even describe it, I'd never seen that kind of blue before."

Stanley, of Space and Atmospheric Sciences (NIS-1), and his colleague had witnessed and captured on video a Hybrid Blue Jet, one that appeared to flicker and branch out into a, before now, unobserved formation. That observation, along with their subsequent findings, was featured as the cover story in the March 14 edition of Nature, the prestigious British scientific journal.

According to the Nature article, the researchers observed this particular Blue Jet reaching an altitude of about 43 miles, almost 18 miles higher than expected from an average Blue Jet. It also had some features that had only been associated with other types of lightning phenomena.

Because the observation took place above a fairly small thunderstorm the researchers speculate that this particular phenomenon "may be common and therefore represent an unaccounted for component of the global electrical circuit," according to the Nature article.

At the time of the Hybrid Blue Jet observation Stanley was working as a post-doctoral researcher for the Langmuir Laboratory at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. He joined NIS-1 last December to continue his work in atmospheric physics, specifically the study of lightning.

"At New Mexico Tech we enjoyed quite of bit of contact with Los Alamos researchers using the FORTE satellite to investigate lightning," said Stanley. "I've been familiar with the FORTE effort for some time, so in December I made the decision to move up here and continue my lightning research."

Stanley's current research projects include the study of lightning's power spectrum as a function of frequency to learn more about the basic properties of lightning discharge; a comparison of lightning data and radar data to better determine the meteorological context for lightning in relation to precipitation and storm structure; and a project to create a Radio Frequency lightning map of the world, a map that would not have the problems of optically-generated lightning maps that are sensitive to cloud depths.

A native of Indiana, Stanley grew up in the South Bend area, did his undergraduate work at Purdue University, earned a master's degree at Michigan State University in astrophysics and a doctorate in atmospheric physics at New Mexico Tech.

Stanley is at the Lab on a two-year post-doc appointment and said he hasn't really thought about what happens after his time as a post-doc. "Right now I'm just having fun, enjoying my work," he said.

For more information, go to http://www.nature.com/nature/links/020314/020314-1.html online.

--Kevin Roark

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