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Atmospheric science

Triggered lightning

Nature Geoscience volume 4, page 140 (2011)Cite this article

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Over the next decades, the story became more complex as the effects of various types of aerosols were differentiated. As opposed to cooling the Earth, black-carbon aerosols exert the second largest human-induced warming, after carbon dioxide. And aerosols were found to change the properties of clouds when present in sufficient concentrations. For example, cloud droplets tend to be smaller but more numerous where small particles act as nuclei for droplet condensation. The clouds become brighter and less likely to produce rain as a result.

Yet there is more to discover. Tianle Yuan and colleagues show that the incidence of lightning activity over the West Pacific Ocean was substantially higher than normal in 2005, following the injection of volcanic aerosols into the usually pristine air (Geophys. Res. Lett. doi: 10.1029/2010GL046052; 2011). Specifically, when aerosol loads rose by 60%, the frequency of lightning flashes increased by 150%.

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  1. Heike Langenberg
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Langenberg, H. Triggered lightning. Nature Geosci 4, 140 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1103

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