Article by Rashmi Wickramasinghe
Boom!
With a deafening sound a cloud of gray smoke conquers the bright sky.
Splash!
Then comes the fiery orange lava.
Gasp!
Your breath hitch seeing the strikes of lightening across the darkened sky.
Exploding mountains that spews hot molten rocks, simply volcanoes are staggering creations of nature. They are openings on the earth’s crust that allow molten rocks, debris and gasses to travel from earth’s mantle to the earth’s surface.
There are three types of volcanoes; active, dormant and extinct.
Inside an active volcano there’s a chamber that collects molten rocks also known as magma.
When the pressure in the chamber builds up, magma travels through the channels inside the rock and flows out to the earth’s surface. When magma comes out from the volcano, it’s called lava.
What is Volcanic Lightening?
As the name suggests it’s literary lightening happens when a volcano erupts. It happens at the early stages of volcanic eruption. Mainly, lightening can be seen near the stratosphere in the plume of the smoke or in the dense clouds of ash near the ground.
How Volcanic Lightening Happens?
Volcanic ash consists of jagged rocks, volcanic glass and minerals. The lightening occurs near the ground is created when individual ash particles rub together. The static electricity builds in this way is enough to generate lightening bolts.
The volcanic lightening happens near the stratosphere is also a result of static electricity build up. Researchers suggest many phenomena that build up static electricity.
- Ice charging – When the plume/ hot air from the volcanic eruption rises high up in the sky, it gets contacted with cold air in the atmosphere. Water in the plume freezes into ice particles. When the ice particles collide, they get charged. The particles with positive charges rise up and gather up in the atmosphere.
- Fractoemission – The rock particles in the plume breaks up within the plume creating static charges. These charges congregate near the vent of the volcano since it occurs at high energy.
- Frictional charging – Frictional charging happens when the rock particles and ash collide and create charged particles. The conventional currents in the plume divide the charges into different zones.
- Radioactive charging – There can be natural radioisotopes in the rock. When they decay within the plume charged areas can be created.
- Plume height – In tall plumes that are taller than 7km, the water vapor concentration is high. This results in Ice charging (Due to high water vapor concentration in cool atmosphere). IN short plumes, lightening happens mostly due to fractoemisson closer to the vent.
Beware! This splendid occurrence is a sight to behold but can be a hint of deadly volcanic eruptions.