Washington (AFP): Lightning has the power to spark wildfires and kill, and scientists say that climate change may lead to 50 per cent more of it by century’s end.
The report in the US journal Science is based on measurements of precipitation and cloud buoyancy, applied to 11 different climate models that estimate how warm the planet may get by 2100.
‘With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive,’ said climate scientist David Romps of the University of California, Berkeley.
‘Warming causes there to be more water vapour in the atmosphere and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time.’
Previous estimates of how lightning would be affected used indirect techniques that were not closely tied to precipitation.
The result was a range between five and 100 per cent more lightning for every one degree Celsius of warming.
The current study is based on the energy available to make air in the atmosphere rise, combined with precipitation rates.
Using data from the US National Weather Service, researchers found that 77 per cent of variation in lightning strikes could be predicted by knowing the convective available potential energy, or CAPE, and precipitation.
‘We were blown away by how incredibly well that worked to predict lightning strikes,’ said Romps.
When applying the parameters to climate models, the team found that each one degree Celsius rise in global average air temperature would mean about 12 per cent more lightning strikes.
Lightning now strikes 25 million times a year around the world.
More lightning strikes could place people at higher risk of being hit and injured or killed, and may also have a devastating effect on wild lands and species.
Lightning strikes have killed 25 people in the United States so far this year, according to the National Weather Service.
Florida had six lightning fatalities, the highest for any state.
With temperatures predicted to rise 4 degrees Celsius, you get about a 50% increase in lightning strikes by 2100.
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