Would lightning be possible on brown dwarfs?

[mollwollfumble]

Lightning is well known from planets, and to some extent the bigger the planet, the more powerful the lightning.

Would it also be possible on brown dwarfs (Y, T, L, M)?
What about red dwarfs (M)? Other stars?

 

[snorkack]

Lightning is a spark discharge through an insulating gas.
Which brown dwarfs are too conductive, because too hot, to allow sparks?

 

[mathman]

For lightning you need an atmosphere and clouds. Starts in general would be too hot.

 

[snorkack]

Cool stars have clouds of soot and/or silicates, but those are still too hot to be insulating. From which temperature/spectral class is a brown dwarf cool enough to be insulating and support sparks?

 

[Ophiolite]

The general view appears to be that lightning in brown dwarfs is likely. For example Helling & Rimmer comment in Lightning and charge processes in brown dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres Royal Society Philosophical Transactions A:
"Possible analogs for exoplanet lightning or lightning in brown dwarfs are terrestrial volcanoes that produce lightning during an eruption in their plumes. <snip> Other astronomical objects, brown dwarfs and planet-forming disks, are also expected to have lightning discharges (Desch & Cuzzi 2000; Helling et al. 2016c) because the underlying physical regimes are similar (Helling et al. 2016a). "

 

[supernova1054]

Lightning is well known from planets, and to some extent the bigger the planet, the more powerful the lightning.

Would it also be possible on brown dwarfs (Y, T, L, M)?
What about red dwarfs (M)? Other stars?

The coolest brown dwarfs are not much more than room temperature at there photospheres so it is possible.