December 12, 2023
3 minutes checked out
Mystical green screens in the sky called “mesospheric ghosts” can in some cases accompany the remarkable red climatic lights called sprites
By Meghan Bartels
Red sprites above a supercell thunderstorm as lightning brightens the cumulonimbus cloud listed below near Hay Springs, Nebraska.
If you’re ever fortunate sufficient to find the climatic drama of a red sprite, look carefully, and you might see green radiance that talks to Earth’s position in the planetary system and clarifies a mystical layer of our world’s environment.
That’s according to scientists who analyzed the source of an odd phenomenon called “mesospheric green emissions from fired up oxygen in sprite tops,” or, more informally, “mesospheric ghosts.”
The mesosphere is a layer of the environment about 30 to 50 miles above Earth’s surface area. That makes it a challenging location for researchers to study, according to Hans Stenbaek-Nielsen, an area researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who was not associated with the brand-new research study. “It’s too expensive for aircrafts, and it’s too low for satellites, so it’s hard to penetrate what is going on at that elevation area,” he states.