A "gigantic jet" -- a huge mysterious burst of lightning that connects a thunderstorm with the upper atmosphere -- appeared over China in 2010, but scientists only recently described the sight.
The jet took place on Aug. 12, 2010 in eastern China -- the farthest a ground-based one has over been observed from the equator, the research team told OurAmazingPlanet.
In the past, jets were seen in tropical and subtropical regions, but this one occurred at about 35 degrees latitude, about the same as southern Tennessee in the U.S., OurAmazingPlanet reported. The Chinese Science bulletin recently published these results.
"This is the first report from mainland China," lead researcher Jing Yang, an atmospheric scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told OurAmazingPlanet.
Researchers observed the storm using Doppler radar data and weather pictures in the infrared band of radiation. The jet peaked at 55 miles above the ground, higher than the cloudtops at an altitude of 11 miles, OurAmazingPlanet reported.
Yang added that her team might have seen another jet in the same area during a different storm, but they would have to investigate further to confirm this.
"It's not as clear as this one if it is a gigantic jet or not," she told OurAmazingPlanet.
Electrical activity above thunderclouds was only scientifically proven in the past century, despite the unconfirmed observations that abounded beforehand.
The first confirmed gigantic jet was reported in 2001, after American researchers saw a blue jet 44 miles high above the clouds at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico -- nearly double the previously observed 26-mile limit, OurAmazingPlanet reported.
Two years after this, researchers used words like "tree jets" and "carrot jets" to describe the bursts they saw during a thunderstorm over the South China Sea near the Philippines.
Scientists are still attempting to make sense of the workings of these gigantic jets, noting that the jets balance out the electrical charge during thunderstorms by discharging a section of the upper atmosphere filled with charged particles, known as the ionosphere, OurAmazingPlanet reported.
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