But the explosiveness of the eruption, the size of the ash, the presence of ice particles, and the water content and temperature of the volcanic plume all play roles in the number and size of lightning discharges. Volcanic ash is like sand. And then really critical is that the ash can go into the engine and melt and then be re-deposited on the the turbine blades.
So it can cause jet engines to stall. World Canada Local. Experts explain the phenomenon. Full Menu Search Menu. Close Local your local region National. Lightning in the Volcanic Plume Lightning is frequently observed in the eruption columns of large volcanoes, but it is rare in Hawaiian eruptions.
Frequently Asked Questions Lightning in the ocean entry plume. Why is there lightning in the eruption cloud? Watch the Video! Volcanic Eruption with Lightning. While analysing their findings, the team noticed that that the frequency of the lightning strikes increased with the size of the ash plume. This correlation, they hope , will offer a new way to gauge how large an eruption is and how much ash is thrown into the air without putting researchers in danger. After all, lightning flashes are pretty easy to count even from far away.
In , the WWLLN started separately tracking lightning activity around 1, active volcanoes to help with ash plume detection. It was this data that Van Eaton and her colleagues harnessed for the new analysis. The team combined this data with satellite imagery to monitor the plume's expansion from above, using these images to calculate the rate at which the volcano spewed molten rock and ash.
What they found was that lighting peaked at six strokes a minute during the early intensification of the eruption and then tapered off as the plume reached a steady expansion. Van Eaton and colleagues observed a similar spike in lightning during a eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile.
In that instance, the lightning peaked at the onset of a pyroclastic flow—a dangerous avalanche of hot rocks and ash. Together, the results hint that these spikes in lightning rates reflect some key change early in the eruption. As Van Eaton and her colleagues note in the study, there's still a large amount of uncertainty associated with general estimates of mass spewing from a volcano based on satellite imagery.
Cimarelli, a National Geographic grantee, replicates volcanic lightning in miniature eruptions to meticulously control each factor. Though the scales vastly differ, lightning in these lab-made eruptions similarly peaks in their initial stages. Then, the flashes become less frequent as the plume expands, likely because the distance between particles—and their ability to charge and discharge—grows ever longer, he says.
Still, there's much more to be studied. The new study hints there may be some difference, but it seems to be small. I hope that this will trigger a lot of interesting modeling work, and people who can take these observations and take them to the next level. All rights reserved. One volcano is not like the others A large part of scientists' clues to pending volcanic eruptions comes from a network of seismometers that measures Earth's many grumbles.
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