eli5 here. I am trying to understand where sheet lightning (electrical discharge within a cloud and not down to earth) comes from. If all the cloud particles are H2O where does an opposite electrical charge come from allowing for a short circuit or discharge.
In: Earth Science
Clouds aren’t uniform, if you watch time lapse footage of them they almost look like a liquid boiling moving so the particles are all colliding in different directions and with different forces.
The process where charge builds up in the clouds likewise is not a uniform thing. There will be areas where a higher charge has built up and another where it hasn’t and so the lighting discharges to the less built up area to equalize the charge.
I know that in order for rain to happen there has to be dust particles that they collect on.. maybe those particles have a different charge
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