Scientists Detect 'Superbolts' 1,000 Times Brighter Than Typical Lightning Strikes - ScienceAlert

Case in point: scientists have just detected a new extreme in hotspots of lightning activity called 'superbolts': intense lightning strikes that shine up to 1,000 times brighter than typical lightning strikes. .

"Understanding these extreme events is important because it tells us what lightning is capable of," said Peterson, who has detected some record-breaking lightning strikes in recent years – including one 2018 megaflash (long-duration lightning burst) that stretched some 700 kilometres (440 miles) across the sky and lasted nearly 17 seconds.

The researchers combed two years of data for lightning strikes that shone 100 times brighter than a typical bolt detected from space, and found about 2 million events intense enough to be called a superbolt – roughly one in every 300 lightning events. .

When the researchers raised the bar to lightning events at least 1,000 times brighter than an ordinary lightning strike, they identified key hotspots of energetic superbolt activity.

There was significant overlap, however, with superbolts identified by Los Alamos researchers in a second study, which classified superbolts by their peak power – the same way these extreme events had first been defined.

In the second study, the researchers analysed 12 years of data from another satellite and counted lighting strikes as superbolts if they produced 100 gigawatts of power.

The most powerful superbolts (producing more than 350 gigawatts of power) resulted from rare positively charged cloud-to-ground events, rather than negatively charged cloud-to-ground events, which characterises most lightning strikes