Storm Elves and Sprites Recorded by Scientists

First posted on 06-15-2010

Powerful storms occurring anywhere in the world but especially those over seas in winter produce unusual electrical discharges known as elves (which are ring shaped), and sprites (in the form of a carrot or column). A team of Spanish scientists has been able to capture a high-speed recording of these fleeting electrical phenomena.

Joan Montanyà is a co-author of the study and a researcher at the Department of Electric Energy at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He explained that elves and sprites only appear in storms with massive fronts capable of producing lightning “with high levels of energy or extreme electric currents.”

Montanyà also observed that significantly fewer elves occurred in storms that formed over land, where electrical currents were apparently weaker than over large bodies of water. He indicated that some of his team’s recordings showed elves and sprites occurring at the same time, an indication of the strength of the storm’s lightning.

Sprites only appear for about 40 milliseconds, so visual observation is difficult to achieve. Montanyà and his team placed a high-speed video camera on the ground and equipped it with an image intensifier. They were then able to remotely capture the activity in a winter storm over the Mediterranean Sea between the coasts of Italy and Spain.

“The observations made it possible not only to capture images of these short duration events, but also mean we can study the structure and dynamics of these highly unique electric discharges,” Montanyà explained.

“Understanding the physics behind lightning and events associated with it will help us to protect ourselves better”, he pointed out. Montanyà stressed the significance of research into sprites and elves as a way to also better understand other dynamics of thunderstorms.