Storms look so nice from the International Space Station – BGR

• The International Space Station is uniquely placed to help scientists on Earth understand some of the most mysterious aspects of hurricanes.
• An observatory on the ISS gives researchers an insight into the wonders of strange storms seen directly from space.
• Strange features with names such as “blue jets” and “elves” are explored using images and data from the ISS.

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Storm storms on Earth are, in general, very cool. Assuming they don’t carry bad winds or a tornado or anything, a thunderstorm can be a pleasant event. However, understanding work within major storms is something that researchers have struggled with for some time, especially when it comes to what happens up in the area where the storm is raging. ends and the rest of the atmosphere begins.

Now, new research from the International Space Station is helping scientists decode some of the most unusual storm surprises, including so-called “blue jets” and “elves”. ”It may sound like sci-fi, but it’s very real and very cool.

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Scientists from the European Space Agency have been using observations from ASIM – the Atmospheric-Space Interactions Monitor, which is mounted to the space station – to study the properties of a storm that can only be seen from space. . Their research was published in Nature.

So what exactly are the “blue jets,” “elves,” and “sprites” that weather researchers were so eager to learn more about? Well, it’s a little complicated, but they all seem to be related, and it’s all about storing stored energy.

“Blue jets are lightning-like lightning discharges that last hundreds of thousands of miles that enter cones as they move from a thunderstorm into the stratosphere,” the researchers say explaining. “They are thought to start in a power outage between the highest cloud area and a series of negative charges at the end of the clouds and in the sky above. The breakdown is like a conductor that moves into streams as they move upwards. ”

What we see with the naked eye (if we happen to be in space looking down at the Earth) is a bright blue bolt burning up into the atmosphere, like a bolt of backlight. Elves, on the other hand, are harder to spot with the naked eye and are also partially visible only with ultraviolet sensing equipment. They are described as “rapidly expanding rings” of optical and UV emissions. Elves sometimes pair with blue jets.

Sprites, on the other hand, are red for our eyes and appear as bolts of energy flowing down towards the storm from above. This area of ​​the atmosphere is called the mesosphere, and it is beneath the ionosphere where the elves were observed.

It’s all very interesting, and as more data and ideas are put together we can look forward to learning more and more about these strange and amazing features of Earth’s climate.