Volcanic Lightning: Because Exploding Mountains Aren't Bad Enough
In the midst of a volcanic eruption, lightning can streak across the ash and smoke above it, but what do we think causes volcanic lightning? Hosted by: Stefan ...
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[♪ INTRO] “On the landward side, a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size.” That’s what Pliny the Younger, nephew of the naturalist Pliny the Elder, wrote after watching Mount Vesuvius erupt and cover the city of Pompeii with ash in 79 CE. And that line ends with the first known report of a phenomenon called volcanic lightning, where lightning streaks across the black clouds of ash and smoke above an explosive eruption, even without a thunderstorm in sight. But despite centuries of scientific study, and millennia of first-hand observations, we still don’t fully understand why volcanic lightning happens in the first place. Though it probably has something to do...
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[♪ INTRO] “On the landward side, a fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size.” That’s what Pliny the Younger, nephew of the naturalist Pliny the Elder, wrote after watching Mount Vesuvius erupt and cover the city of Pompeii with ash in 79 CE. And that line ends with the first known report of a phenomenon called volcanic lightning, where lightning streaks across the black clouds of ash and smoke above an explosive eruption, even without a thunderstorm in sight. But despite centuries of scientific study, and millennia of first-hand observations, we still don’t fully understand why volcanic lightning happens in the first place. Though it probably has something to do...
