We already know that climate change is increasing the likelihood of daily floods, tornadoes and heat waves. Now, new research shows that lightning will strike 50 percent more often in our warming world, though where these electric shocks will occur remains a mystery.
Currently, there are about 20 million lighting strikes each year in the United States, igniting deadly wildfires and threatening to strike buildings and even people, the NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory reports. And with climate change causing average global temperatures to rise, this number is only expected to increase.
Based on 11 climate models, the new study, published in the journal Science, predicts that for every one degree Celsius of global warming, lightning strikes will increase by about 12 percent. Overall, that means that for every two lightning strikes in 2000, there will be three in 2100. However, scientists don't yet know where or when exactly these upsurges will occur.
"With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive," climate scientist David Romps, from the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. "This has to do with water vapor, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere. Warming causes there to be more water vapor in the atmosphere, and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time."
Lightning is caused by charge separation within clouds. And the more precipitation - in the form of water vapor and heavy ice particles - there is in the atmosphere, the more lightning strikes will occur. Thus, precipitation is a means of measuring how convective the atmosphere is, and convection generates lightning.
Researchers used this knowledge to determine if precipitation and cloud buoyancy were predictors of lighting. The speeds of convective clouds - determined by a factor called CAPE, or convective available potential energy - were worked out by balloon-born instruments that are released around the United States twice every day. By combining these measurements with data on precipitation and lightning strikes, researchers were able to conclude that 77 percent of the variations in strikes can be predicted from these two factors.
"We were blown away by how incredibly well that worked to predict lightning strikes," Romps said.
Hundreds of people are already struck by lightning each year, and an increase in the number of strikes will only result in more human injuries. The findings provide further evidence that climate change is having far greater effects on weather patterns, and public health, than initially anticipated.
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