Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Do Cosmic Ray Air Showers Initiate Lightning?: A Statistical Analysis Of Cosmic Ray Air Showers And Lightning Mapping Array Data, B. M. Hare, Hamid K. Rassoul

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

It has been argued in the technical literature, and widely reported in the popular press, that cosmic ray air showers (CRASs) can initiate lightning via a mechanism known as relativistic runaway electron avalanche (RREA), where large numbers of high-energy and low-energy electrons can, somehow, cause the local atmosphere in a thundercloud to transition to a conducting state. In response to this claim, other researchers have published simulations showing that the electron density produced by RREA is far too small to be able to affect the conductivity in the cloud sufficiently to initiate lightning. In this paper, we compare 74 days …