Beyond 80N, Lightning Storms Increase From +/- 100 Per Year In The Early 2010s To More Than 7,000 Today
In August 2019, something bizarre happened in the Far North: A massive thunderstorm produced more than a thousand flashes of lightning, including a record-breaking bolt that hit just 32 miles from the North Pole, the closest strike ever recorded. “It was a crazy summer,” says Rick Thoman, a climatologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
It’s common knowledge that thunderstorms and lightning are more likely when it’s hot than when it’s cold; they are more prevalent in the tropics than in the Arctic. So, scientists wondered: Was the Arctic becoming more electric in our warming world, and if so, what impacts would that have? In general, a warmer world is expected to be a stormier world. But the precise impacts that climate change will have on thunderstorms and lightning remain a matter of scientific debate. Getting a handle on this is important for a host of reasons. Globally, tens of thousands of people die each year from lightning strikes. Lightning sparks chemical reactions in the atmosphere that can either exacerbate or counteract air pollution and climate change, with surprisingly powerful impacts on planet-warming methane. And, of course, lightning strikes are a significant cause of wildfires, which can devastate landscapes and release planet-warming carbon into the air.
So far, the detection networks that count lightning strikes around the world have seen only a vague hint of an upwards trend in total global lightning. But in the north, the story is different. In the Arctic, there has been a far more dramatic upsurge, with one report finding that north of the 80th parallel (passing through the top of Greenland), recorded lightning events went from around 100 per year in the early 2010s to more than 7,000 in 2021. Historically, “the Arctic basically didn’t have lightning at all,” says Robert Holzworth, a retired atmospheric physicist with the University of Washington in Seattle. “Now it’s got a lot more. It’s easy to see that.”
Researchers are now scrambling to get a better sense of how much lightning will increase in the north, and what that will mean for people, local ecosystems, and the global climate. Will more lightning spark more fires, or will more rain — also brought by climate change — dampen them? And is what’s happening in the north an aberration, or does it signal change across the rest of the planet?
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https://e360.yale.edu/features/arctic-lightning-climate-change
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