The misconception of Cloud-cloud collision is unable to show continuous triboelectric effect and charge differentiation of clouds. Rather, now charge exchange. Rather, wikipedia mentioned charge exchange between uprising supercooled water and ice droplets and Graupel (soft haill).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Electrification
But both are nearly same material (water and ice)- why and do they exchange charge? even if they dow, how only state and crystallinity change of a material can change its triboelectric properties? Is there any structure-property justification of triboelectric series, anyway?
Hi Sumit, I suggest you to start reviewing a very good explanation of charge generation in thunderclouds available in Vernon Cooray's book entitled "An introduction to lightning", Chapter 6 and their references therein.
The plausible charge separation mechanism in convective clouds, leading to lightning, was suggested by Baker et al. (1987) (Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 113, 1987, pp 1193–1215). The essence of the process is the interaction of particles with different growth rates and different electrical charges. The succinct summary is presented by Saunders in the paper “Charge Separation Mechanisms in Clouds”
>>(Saunders, 2008, page 347) Begin quote:
“A thunderstorm charging mechanism based on vapour deposition rate, first proposed by Baker et al. (1987), has been successful in helping to account for differences between the results from various laboratory studies. The concept follows on from the result described earlier that, during collisions leading to the removal of some surface mass from the larger particle, fast growing ice surfaces charge positively and conversely, sublimating surfaces charge negatively. Baker et al., suggested that an additional variable comes into play when two ice surfaces having different vapour diffusional growth rates come into brief contact, namely the surface state of the smaller particle in the collision process...”.
End quote
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