AE13A-07
Observations of High Peak Current 'lull' Lightning Flashes

Monday, 14 December 2015: 15:10
3001 (Moscone West)
Yang Zhang1,2, Paul R Krehbiel2, Harald E Edens2 and Michael Stock3, (1)CAMS Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Beijing, China, (2)New Mexico Tech, Langmuir Laboratory, Socorro, NM, United States, (3)Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
Abstract:
A new and peculiar type of negative cloud-to-ground (-CG) lightning flash has been found from LMA observations of storms. Called a 'lull' flash, the discharge begins with a short duration (~5-10 ms), stepped leader and high peak current return stroke, followed by a brief period of inactivity. After a few tens to a few hundreds of milliseconds, the discharge reignites in the same location as a normal -CG. VHF observations show a complete lack of activity during the lull. The flashes were first identified from LMA observations during a 2008 lightning study in West Virginia (Krehbiel, 2012 ILDC), but are seen in other normally electrified storms. They are characterized by large negative peak currents (-50 to -150 kA) in NLDN data.

 Here we report detailed LMA, interferometer, and fast antenna observations of lull flashes obtained at Langmuir Laboratory in 2013. A series of six lull CGs occurred over an 11 min time interval in a small storm on August 5. Analysis of the observations shows the breakdown immediately produced a stepped leader that went straight to ground. The durations from initial breakdown to the return stroke (RS) was 2-15 ms, corresponding to leader speeds of 4×105 to 3×106 m/s. Peak currents of the RSs were -32 to -188 kA. The lulls began 10-29 ms after the RSs, and lasted 40-100 ms before the discharge reignited. By contrast, the durations, speeds and peak current values of the reignited first strokes were those of normal -CGs, namely, 9 to 105 ms, -11.5kA to 55.8kA, and 0.6×105 to 6.7×105 m/s. Further analysis indicates the lull flashes occurred when the storm had substantial negative charge but little lower positive charge, allowing the initial stroke to go straight to ground at a high speed. The energetic stroke somehow quenches the discharge a short time afterward while much negative charge remains, which leads to reignition and the second part of the discharge. Exactly how and why this happens remains an open question.