Optical emissions and behaviors of the blue starters, blue jets, and gigantic jets observed in the Taiwan transient luminous event ground campaign

Abstract

On 22 July 2007, 37 blue jets/starters and 1 gigantic jet occurring over a thunderstorm in the Fujian province of China were observed from the Lulin observatory on the central mountain ridge of Taiwan. The majority of the jets were observed to occur in a 5 min window during the mature phase of the jet-producing thunderstorm. These jets have significant red band emissions. However, the blue emissions from these jets were not discernible due to severe atmospheric scattering. A model estimation of the emissions from a streamer reveals that the red emissions in blue starters and blue jets are mainly from the nitrogen first positive band (1PN2). The type II gigantic jet is the first of this type that was observed from the ground. The generation sequence of the gigantic jet begins with a blue starter, then a blue jet occurs at the same cloud top after ∼100 ms and finally develops into a gigantic jet ∼50 ms later. Using "optical strokes" as surrogates of the lightning strokes, the correlations between jets and the cloud lightning are explored. The results indicate that the occurrence of jets can be affected by the preceding local cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning or nearby lightning (intracloud (IC) or CG), while in turn the jets might also affect the ensuing lightning activity. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.