Lightning in a Forest (Wild) Fire: Mechanism at the Molecular Level
- 1 Department of Physics and Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Laval University, Quebec, Canada
- 2 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 3 Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany
- 4 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 5 State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
- 6 State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
- 7 Institute of Modern Optics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
Abstract
The mechanism of lightning that ignites a forest fire and the lightning that occurs above a forest fire are explained at the molecular level. It is based on two phenomena, namely, internal charge separation inside the atmospheric cloud particles and the existence of a layer of positively charged hydrogen atoms sticking out of the surface of the liquid layer of water on the surface of rimers. Strong turbulence-driven collisions of the ice particles and water droplets with the rimers give rise to breakups of the ice particles and water droplets into positively and negatively charged fragments leading to charge separation. Hot weather in a forest contributes to the updraft of hot and humid air, which follows the same physical/chemical processes of normal lightning proposed and explained recently [1] . Lightning would have a high probability of lighting up and burning the dry biological materials in the ground of the forest, leading to a forest (wild) fire. The burning of trees and other plants would release a lot of heat and moisture together with a lot of smoke particles (aerosols) becoming a strong updraft. The condition for creating lightning is again satisfied which would result in further lightning high above the forest wild fire.
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