Paper was nominated for the Langmuir Award in 2021
Sprites are short-lived, large-scale electrical discharges that happen at the edge of space in response to electrical activity in underlying thunderstorms. This article shows the detailed relationship between the electrical current in sprites and its morphological shape, as detected with a high-speed camera operating at 100,000 frames per second. During two prolific nights of observations, our team collected a large data set of sprites with radio signatures of electrical currents flowing within the sprite body. Observations were carried out from New Mexico Tech’s Langmuir Laboratory atop the Magdalena Mountains in central New Mexico. A statistical analysis shows — for the first time — a clear relationship between electrical current and the optical morphology. Sprites with more complex morphology and larger size also have larger electrical currents, and therefore a larger impact in the middle atmosphere.
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