Related papers: Electrified fallout from a wildfire plume
Volcanic eruptions are associated with a wide range of electrostatic effects. Increasing evidence suggests that high-altitude discharges (lightning) in maturing plumes are driven by electrification processes that require the formation of…
The existence of volcanic lightning and alteration of the atmospheric potential gradient in the vicinity of near-vent volcanic plumes provides strong evidence for the charging of volcanic ash. More subtle electrical effects are also visible…
The plume from the 2011 eruption of Gr\'{i}msv\"{o}tn was highly electrically charged, as shown by the considerable lightning activity measured by the UK Met Office's low-frequency lightning detection network. Previous measurements of…
Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds are storm clouds generated by extreme wildfires. PyroCbs are associated with unpredictable, and therefore dangerous, wildfire spread. They can also inject smoke particles and trace gases into the upper…
Mineral clouds in substellar atmospheres play a special role as a catalyst for a variety of charge processes. If clouds are charged, the surrounding environment becomes electrically activated, and ensembles of charged grains are…
Grains in desert sandstorms spontaneously generate strong electrical charges; likewise volcanic dust plumes produce spectacular lightning displays. Charged particle clouds also cause devastating explosions in food, drug and coal processing…
The effects of water and temperature on the triboelectrification of granular materials have been reported by numerous authors, but have not been studied robustly in the context of volcanic plumes. Here, we present the results of a set of…
Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) firestorms -- wildfire-generated thunderstorms -- can trigger rapid fire spread. However, the multi-physics nature of pyroCb has made their core mechanisms inaccessible to direct observation and previous simulation…
In clouds of suspended particles (grains, droplets, spheres, crystals, etc.), collisions electrify the particles and the clouds, producing large electric potential differences over large scales. This is seen most spectacularly in the…
In wildfires, burning pieces of ember-firebrands-are carried downstream by wind. At the time of landing, these firebrands can start secondary fires far away from the main burning unit. This phenomenon is called spotting and the secondary…
When mobilized, granular materials become charged as grains undergo collisions and frictional interactions. On Earth, this process, known as triboelectrification, has been recognized in volcanic plumes and sandstorms. Yet, frictional…
Radar observations from a prescribed fire experiment reveal a large-scale, billow-like vorticity pair associated with the plume head at the onset of plume bending. The bending confines the ceiling height of the plume, delaying its smoke…
Formation of a lightning within a cloud, between clouds and towards the earth is studied as an application of sociophysics. The three dimensional society is sky or cloud, which has members as electrically charged clouds (in sky) or patches…
Thunderstorms and the lightning that they produce are inherently interesting phenomena that have intrigued scientists and mankind in general for many years. The study of thunderstorms has rapidly advanced during the past century and many…
Wildfires pose a significant natural disaster risk to populations and contribute to accelerated climate change. As wildfires are also affected by climate change, extreme wildfires are becoming increasingly frequent. Although they occur less…
Cloud-to-ground lightning is the most common among atmospheric discharges. Since electric fields in the vicinity of a thunder-cloud do not exceed 250 kV/m the physical process that triggers the lightning remains unexplained. [1, 2, 3]…
A collision between two atomic nuclei accelerated at a speed close to that of light creates a dense system of quarks and gluons. Interactions among them are so strong that they behave collectively like a droplet of fluid of ten-femtometer…
We construct net baryon number and strangeness susceptibilities as well as correlations between electric charge and strangeness from experimental data of the ALICE Collaboration at the CERN LHC. The data were taken in Pb-Pb collisions at…
The nature of ball lightning (BL) is pure electric and can be described by simple equations following to elementary considerations of equality of translational acceleration and velocity of the ions and electrons, a spherical-like dipole BL…
Thunderstorms produce strong electric fields over regions on the order of kilometer. The corresponding electric potential differences are on the order of 100 MV. Secondary cosmic rays reaching these regions may be significantly accelerated…