105 pillars of light seen over the Himalayas. We now know what they were

India Today

04-07-2025

On the night of May 19, 2022, the skies above the southern Tibetan Plateau, near the sacred Pumoyongcuo Lake, were illuminated by a breathtaking display: 105 towering pillars of red light flickered above the Himalayas.Two amateur photographers captured the images, details of which are published in a paper in Springer Nature. The phenomenon, now confirmed as the largest outbreak of 'red sprites' ever recorded above a single South Asian thunderstorm, has finally been explained thanks to a detailed study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences by researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China.
The lightning that caused the sprites was mostly of positive type. (Photo: Angel An and Shuchang Dong)
advertisementWHAT WERE THE PILLARS OF LIGHT?
Red sprites are a rare and enigmatic form of high-altitude lightning, occurring between 40 and 55 miles above the Earth, far above conventional thunderstorm clouds.Unlike typical lightning, these electrical discharges manifest as fleeting, jellyfish-shaped flashes of crimson that can sometimes be crowned with bluish tendrils.On that remarkable night, two Chinese astrophotographers, Angel An and Shuchang Dong, captured the full spectacle, including not only the 105 red sprites but also 16 secondary jets and at least four elusive green emissions known as 'ghost sprites'—the first such sightings in Asia.WHAT TRIGGERED THE PILLARS OF LIGHT?Scientists found that these sprites were caused by powerful lightning strikes that hit the ground from the top of clouds.These strikes came from a huge thunderstorm system, called a mesoscale convective complex, which covered over 2,00,000 square kilometers from the Ganges Plain all the way to the Tibetan Plateau.
The phenomenon is now confirmed as the largest outbreak of 'red sprites'. (Photo:Angel An and Shuchang Dong)
The lightning that caused the sprites was mostly of positive type and had very strong peak currents, over +50 kiloamperes. These strikes happened in the flatter, widespread part of the storm, similar to what's seen in big storms over the U.S. Great Plains and parts of coastal Europe.To unravel the precise origins of each sprite, the research team developed an innovative method that synchronised video frames with satellite motion and star field data, achieving timing accuracy within one second.This allowed them to link about 70 percent of the sprites to their triggering lightning strikes, providing unprecedented insight into the coupling between thunderstorms and the upper atmosphere.The discovery not only confirms that Himalayan thunderstorms can produce some of the world's most complex and intense upper-atmospheric electrical discharges, but also opens new avenues for studying the physical and chemical impacts of such events on regional and global atmospheric systems.For scientists and skywatchers alike, the 105 pillars of light above the Himalayas have become a landmark event in the exploration of Earth's most mysterious lightning phenomena.- Ends