Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 5.1
(
a
) Photograph of elf from the surface of the ground in America. Reproduced with kind
permission. (
b
) Photograph of elf from shuttle “Columbia” in January 2003.
h
D
88
˙
8km
registration of the UV and IR portions of the flashes, the satellites “Tatyana-1” and
“Tatyana-2” (Sadovnichiy et al.
2011
; Veden'kin et al.
2011
) were launched. These
satellites have reported the distribution of flashes over the Earth's surface (Fig.
5.6
).
Flashes occur mainly in the equatorial zone, not only above continents, where storm
activity is the greatest, but also above the oceans.
For an explanation of high-altitude discharges, an assumption of an initiating role
of powerful lightning discharges (Marshall and Inan
2007
) and a supposition about a
streamer mechanism of filamentary discharge formation development (Raizer et al.
2010
) is usually used. With that, separate sides of the phenomenon without due
quantitative analysis of the process as a whole are discussed.
