Analysis of a mesoscale convective system that produced a single sprite
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- 作者：Jing Yang ; Gaopeng Lu ; Ningyu Liu ; Haihua Cui ; Yu Wang…
- 关键词：sprite ; mesoscale convective system ; Doppler radar ; lightning ; magnetic field
- 刊名：Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
- 出版年：2017
- 出版时间：February 2017
- 年：2017
- 卷：34
- 期：2
- 页码：258-271
- 全文大小：
- 刊物主题：Atmospheric Sciences; Meteorology; Geophysics/Geodesy;
- 出版者：Science Press
- ISSN：1861-9533
- 卷排序：34
文摘
Sprites are brief optical emissions occurring above thunderstorms. Features of sprites and their parent thunderstorms and lightning activities have been studied by many researchers. Here, we report a single sprite recorded over a mesoscale convective system during its life cycle in Northeast China. The results show that the sprite might have been a dancing one, with a 20 km horizontal displacement from its parent cloud-to-ground flash (CG) and a 38 ms time delay; all the sprite elements occurred during the continuing current process of the parent flash. The peak current of the parent CG was the largest during the almost one-hour time window containing the sprite, and the absolute values of all the negative flashes were smaller than 100 kA during the same time period and did not produce sprite. The sprite did not occur during the time period in which the maximum area of the thunderstorm reached. The occurrence of sprite corresponded well with the decay of the thunderstorm convection, and no significant relationship between the occurrence of sprite and the increase in the 30–35 dBZ and 35–40 dBZ interval was found. The large wind gradient in the 8–12 km region of the thunderstorm may have played an important role in the sprite production.