Churchill Science

More great questions from the Great Wall…

Science in progress… This is how Lisa spent a little of her summer vacation.

When volcanoes erupt, there is a huge cloud of dust, gas, and sometimes ash. For a long time, scientists have known that there are lightning strikes inside these clouds, but needed to invent a way to screen out the cloud itself to get a picture of what was going on inside.

This image was taken by the Lightning Mapping Array, set up by scientists to take measurements inside the volcanic cloud at Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The scientists set up their equipment when they heard that Mt. Redoubt was getting ready to erupt again, and waited two months until the eruptions began. Here’s yet another reason why it’s important to monitor volcanoes!