Megaflashes!
Down to a Science: A LANL Podcast
English - March 22, 2022 16:19 - 9 minutes - 8.39 MB - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsScience News lanl los alamos national security science technology Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: Community Connections: A summer science camp expands minds (and lives)
Next Episode: A carbon-neutral future for the Mountain West
Megaflashes are incredibly rare. In order to record one from the ground, or from an aircraft or satellite in a low orbit, the sensor has to be exactly in the right place at the right time, which is unlikely. Now, researchers are using Geostationary Lightning Mappers and other instruments that can map flash size from space and — importantly — provide continuous coverage over a large portion of the Earth. No matter how rare these megaflashes are or where they occur across the instrument’s vast field of view, GLM can detect them and measure their dimensions.
LA-UR-22-22537