Thunderstorms May Become More Violent, If Less Frequent, Due to Climate Change


Carolina Ödman/CC BY-SA 2.0

Another small insight into how climate change may influence extreme weather: Scientists from Tel Aviv University say that their new research shows that for every 1°C of warming there will be roughly a 10% increase in lightning activity.

That’s based on computer modeling and accounts for the more violent part of storms, but they also compared their models against current real-world examples. El Niño conditions proved insightful:

“During El Nino years, which occur in the Pacific Ocean or Basin, Southeast Asia gets warmer and drier. There are fewer thunderstorms, but we found fifty percent more lightning activity,” says Prof. Price. Typically, he says,we would expect drier conditions to produce less lightning. However, researchers also found that while there were fewer thunderstorms, the ones that did occur were more intense. (Science Daily)

Read the original research: Journal of Geophysical Research

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