Do people have an impact on lightning? Research suggests there were fewer lightning strikes in 2020 due to COVID lockdown. FInd out more about it below. lightning
Now, researchers think they have found another impact of the lockdowns -- less lightning in the spring of 2020.
Earle Williams, a physical meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who presented the research, said the team used three different methods to measure lightning. "All results showed the same trend -- that is, a diminished lightning activity associated with a diminished aerosol concentration," he said.
But when there's less pollution and clouds form larger and warmer rain droplets, "you starve the cloud of the ice particles that it needs for charge separation, and you have reduced lightning activity," said Williams. This reduction in pollution is likely a major reason why Williams and his colleagues observed a drop in lightning activity, which includes lightning that strikes the ground, as well as lightning within clouds and lightning between clouds and the air. One of the researchers' methods, which captured many intracloud flashes , measured 19% fewer flashes in March 2020 to May 2020 compared to the average number of lightning flashes across the same three-month period in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
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