A ‘superbolt’ sounds like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, but it’s actually a real thing, and this rare type of super lightning strike happens all over the world.
Roughly 90 percent of regular lightning strikes take place over land. The small percentage of strikes that happen over the ocean become superbolts or lightning bolts that are up to 1,000 times brighter and more powerful than regular lightning.
The name came about after a study performed in the 1970s, but scientists still weren’t convinced that these bolts of lightning were any different until an experiment and recent analysis of years’ worth of data on lightning.
The Big Mystery
Scientists have been trying to learn more about superbolts for some time. They initially speculated that superbolts resulted from the storm itself or some factor in the cloud. It turned out that these super-bright bolts are caused by something below the clouds.
According to Colin Price, an atmospheric scientist at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, this new information was a surprise and a departure from previous thinking. According to an experiment conducted by one of his colleagues, marine scientist Mustafa Asfur, It turns out that salt in the ocean magnifies and draws out the power of lightning from the clouds to create and intensify the superbolts.
An Experiment Reveals a Discovery
To learn more about why more superbolts happened over the ocean, Asfur performed several experiments using water from different oceans, as well as wet soil samples, to recreate the lightning conditions in a lab setting. He devised a simple box to create mini storms and added a spark generator along with a few electrodes. The box was dark so that he could observe the intensity of the sparks. The experiment’s results showed that salt increased the strength and intensity of the lightning, and the higher the salt concentration in the water, the stronger the superbolt.
Once Asfur and his colleagues saw the results, they reran the experiment with water from the Dead Sea. As expected, this created a super-bright spark in the test box. The team then used water samples from the Sea of Galilee, which has much less salt, and the Mediterranean Sea, which is less salty than the Dead Sea.
For comparison, the Dead Sea is almost 700 times saltier than the Sea of Galilee. All of the created charges were stronger than those over soil, which they also tested.
The Super Reaction Explained
The explanation of why the ocean helps to create superbolts comes down to the ions in salt and how they behave when in water; basically, more salt ions in the ocean water conduct electricity better.
During a lightning strike, increased ions lead to more electricity being drained from a cloud. This action results in a higher peak current and a brighter flash.
These superbright bolts produce 100 gigawatts or more of electrical power. For perspective, in 2018, all the solar panels and wind turbines in the U.S. combined made a total of 163 gigawatts of power, according to the United States Department of Energy.
Other scientists have commented that, while this is good information, the lab results obtained by Asfar and his colleagues do not explain everything about this type of lightning. They argue that the research does not address the effects of the many other dynamic, real-life processes involved.
Surveying the Lightning Strikes
To have useful information on lightning that’s worth studying, scientists collected and surveyed data on over two billion lighting strikes from 2010 to 2018. There were only about 8,000 superbolts, and the great majority of them happened over the oceans. Most of the superbolts happened over the Mediterranean Sea.
The Future of Superbolts
Superbolts are relatively rare and still a mysterious occurrence. Salt concentrations can’t explain all of the superbolt’s strike locations, as the research also uncovered that one terrestrial site, the Andes Mountains, also has its share of superbolt strikes.
Climate change has led to saltier oceans in general, which may lead to even more intense lightning, although offset by other factors. Oceans have also become more acidic due to climate change, which adds extra hydrogen ions. More ions in the water mean more electricity conducted, which over time, with even more global warming, could create a super version of the mysterious superbolts.
