From the UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH: Lightning storms less likely in a warming planet, study suggests
Lightning may strike less often in future across the globe as the planet warms, a scientific study suggests.
The research forecasts a 15 per cent drop in the average number of lightning flashes worldwide by the turn of this century, if global temperatures are in the top range of forecasts.
A drop in the incidence of lightning strikes could impact on the frequency of wildfires, especially in tropical regions.
It could also lower the incidence of lightning strikes to infrastructure and affect how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to climate change.
Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds and Lancaster University used a newly devised method to calculate the likely incidence of lightning flashes from storm clouds.
Unlike traditional calculations of lightning flashes at the global scale, which are based on the height of clouds, their approach takes into account the movement of tiny ice particles that form and move within clouds. Electrical charges build up in these ice particles, and in cold water droplets and soft hail formed inside clouds. These are discharged during storms, giving rise to lightning flashes and thunder. Scientists estimate there are 1.4 billion lightning flashes each year around the world.
The latest results, accounting for a 5C rise in global average temperatures by the year 2100, show that on average lightning flashes are less likely in future, in contrast to previous studies.
Scientists previously verified their method by applying it to current conditions. The research, published in Nature Climate Change, was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
Dr Declan Finney of the University of Leeds, formerly of the University of Edinburgh, who carried out the study, said: “This research questions the reliability of previous projections of lightning, and encourages further study into the effects of climate change on cloud ice and lightning.”
Professor Ruth Doherty, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences, said: “This research expands our current knowledge of climate change impacts on lightning and suggests that in a warmer world, the incidence of lightning is likely to decrease.”
Professor Oliver Wild, Of Lancaster University, said: “The results provide new insight into the likely impacts of lightning on future atmospheric composition and climate.”
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The finding is interesting, and contradictory some claims of increased severe weather that is expected due to warming. Usually, lighting frequency and intensity increases with thunderstorm magnitude, and large thunderstorms are more likely to produce torrential rainfall (flash flooding), destructive downburst winds, large hail, and tornadoes.
ADDED: (since the press release didn’t contain it) Of course, the study uses RCP 8.5 modeling, which is wildly overbiased, so take it with a grain of salt.
The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0072-6
A projected decrease in lightning under climate change
Abstract
Lightning strongly influences atmospheric chemistry1,2,3, and impacts the frequency of natural wildfires4. Most previous studies project an increase in global lightning with climate change over the coming century1,5,6,7, but these typically use parameterizations of lightning that neglect cloud ice fluxes, a component generally considered to be fundamental to thunderstorm charging8. As such, the response of lightning to climate change is uncertain. Here, we compare lightning projections for 2100 using two parameterizations: the widely used cloud-top height (CTH) approach9, and a new upward cloud ice flux (IFLUX) approach10 that overcomes previous limitations. In contrast to the previously reported global increase in lightning based on CTH, we find a 15% decrease in total lightning flash rate with IFLUX in 2100 under a strong global warming scenario. Differences are largest in the tropics, where most lightning occurs, with implications for the estimation of future changes in tropospheric ozone and methane, as well as differences in their radiative forcings. These results suggest that lightning schemes more closely related to cloud ice and microphysical processes are needed to robustly estimate future changes in lightning and atmospheric composition.
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No wonder people lived in caves 20 000 years ago.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/field/image/Origins-of-the-Faeries.jpg
Maybe they starting to considering that too much lightning kills AGW, so, no much lightning allowed for now on…:)
cheers
These people don’t get out much do they? Even when they come to tropical places for their gabfests, they don’t seem to take in their surroundings. Thunderstorms are one of the emergent phenomena identified by Willis.The warmer it is, the more likely they are to occur. When it’s hot and sticky round here, we get a thunderstorm. Sometimes we HOPE we get a thunderstorm, in spite of the inherent danger. After that, everything cools off a bit. Same reason a cyclone isn’t all bad news. Might fill the reservoir that is still only 15%, and the end of the wet season is not far off.
I guess that as we approach 2050 the climate modellers will have to extend their analysis to the year 2200 because even the IPCC will recognize that a less than 1 degree C rise for the next 82 years is not enough to scare people. Thus lengthening the projections will up the temperature significantly since the climate models have it directly programmed into them. Nick Stokes replied to me on another thread that 1.4 degrees C per century (even though last century was less than 1 C increase) cant continue forever or else we will have catastrophe. So now Nick Stokes agrees that Al Gore was wrong. Al Gore said we would have catastrophic warming (or heating if he really meant catastrophic) in a very short period of time. So now Nick has resigned himself to agreeing with the IPCC about the low increase in warming. So folks we dont have catastrophic immediate warming we may have a slow warmup 1.4 C per century (Nick Stokes and the IPCC). Actually the IPCC is a bit more pessimistic than Nick cause their range is 1.5 to 4.5) So can we call it Slow catastrophic AGW? The problem with that theory is it isnt runaway global warming. You cant have a slow buildup of warming over centuries without it getting worse at some point ( in other words you need acceleration). This is because that increase in CO2 happens in a finite atmosphere. There is only so much space to go around. Any buildup of CO2 crowds out the other molecules in the atmosphere. Just ask Venus . It has 97% CO2. However the reason that Venus is hot as hell is 1) it is closer (2/3 of the way) to the sun than Earth 2) It lost most of its water because it has no magnetic field to keep the solar wind at bay.
Without the acceleration the earth system will always balance itself. There is no physical mechanism whereby 1 input increase(CO2) can cause a steady buildup of heat without that buldup accelerating. Unless CO2 leads to runaway heating then the whole theory is kaput. That is why the AGW crowd needs the supposed positive cloud reinforcing. We may have seen a real increase in warming( which I doubt very much based on the evidence) but we certainly havent seen an accelerated increase in warming. Even the IPCC can’t tell us when this accelerated warming is supposed to happen. Maybe the GOD of Climate Change himself Mr. Nick Stokes can tell us.
We had terrific storms here in Sydney, Australia a few weeks back I got caught out in on my way home from work, got drenched. When I did get home found our home Wi-Fi router failing and the garage door opener motor had tripped off. Must have been a direct hit to the block.
Love storms like that!
“Electrical charges build up in these ice particles, and in cold water droplets and soft hail formed inside clouds.”
This is not how lightning works. A large bolt of lightning transfers on the order of 100 Coulombs. Voltage is joules per Coulomb and to get the billion volts necessary to break down the air between the cloud and the surface requires an energy on the order of 100 billion Joules.
There are no free charges in a cloud. The water in clouds has an electric dipole moment and starting with the fair weather electric field, they align producing a dipole cloud forming a pair of capacitors, one to the surface and another to the ionosphere. The billions of Joules of energy are not in the form of the kinetic energy of these ice particles in motion. The origin of the energy is the potential energy of a mass of liquid and solid water lifted against the force of gravity.
The energy for cloud to ground lightning is not stored in the cloud, but in the space between the surface and the cloud as the mass of water in the cloud pushes down on the top plate of the capacitor between the cloud and surface.
When a capacitor charges, the plates are drawn together with a force and are held apart mechanically until the energy stored in the capacitor is equal and opposite to the electrostatic force between the plates. As a capacitor discharges, the plates are pushed apart. This is symmetrical and just as a charging and discharging capacitor results in a force between the plates, a force between the plates can charge (or discharge) a capacitor. This is easily tested by experiment.
Cart – horse
Ignoramuses here and there.
Q
No, no, wrong. A degree C of ground level warming increases evaporation, increases convection, increases cumulus clouds, increases rainfall, so must increase lightning storms.
Lightning produces nitrates which then rain down and help fertilize the soil. Less lightning is not beneficial.