Is Lightning just a Earth/Solar wind conductor?

[DesertAndy]

I have been wondering if our understanding of lightning is another place where a radical new idea is needed. I have wondered whether our myopic view of Earthly lightning would be better understood if we looked at the lightning as a discharge of the potential difference between the Earth's surface and the solar wind?
The way that this might work is that the thunderclouds act as a better conductor for the electricity than the drier air that we have with out storms. A good thunderhead is supposed to tower into the stratosphere, if that is the case it would be shortening the distance for an arc from earth to the ionosphere. Tell me what I have missed.

[redeye]

A good thunderhead is supposed to tower into the stratosphere

Cumulonimbus

The flattened tops of these clouds are caused by the cloud hitting the Tropopause (which is the border between the Troposphere and the Stratosphere.

My point would be that each of these boundaries between the layers of the atmosphere (Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere) seem to act as virtual cathodes and energy seems to step up or down between them in a number of different ways.

Lightning

Cheers!

[nick c]

hello DesertAndy,
Welcome to the Thunderbolts forum.
Sounds like you are on the right track, the conventional explanation of charge seperation as a process taking place in a the cloud due to the mechanical interaction of water and ice particles is inadequate.
Here are some Thunderbolt Picture of the Day (TPOD)s dealing with that subject:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/ ... acitor.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/ ... -earth.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/ ... erbolt.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/ ... clouds.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/ ... eather.htm

Also:
[url2=http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj]Electric Weather[/url2]

nick c

[DesertAndy]

Thank you for pointing me to those articles. You probably hear this a lot but, this stuff makes much more sense than traditional science. It simplifies and unifies. Now how do I convince the school board that we need to change the way we teach science?