Enhancement of cloud‐to‐ground lightning over Houston, Texas

Abstract

Houston. We suggest that the elevated flash densities could result from several factors, including, 1) the convergence due to the urban heat island effect, and 2) the increasing levels of air pollution from anthropogenic sources producing numerous small droplets and thereby suppressing mean droplet size.The latter effect would enable more cloud water to reach the mixed phase region where it is involved in the formation of precipitation and the separation of electric charge, leading to an enhancement of lightning.

Total Lightning Flash Activity Response to Aerosol over China Area

“…Figure 6 presents the correlation between the AOD and lightning flash density for JJAS. The results show that the lightning flash density was positively correlated with the AOD (R = 0.84 for June, R = 0.91 for July, R = 0.94 for August and R = 0.9 for September), which is in accordance with some earlier studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. The dependence of the electrical activity and AOD displays a positive correlation, which suggests that the enhanced aerosol loading is one of the important reasons for the increase in lightning activity.…”

Intensification of Pacific storm track linked to Asian pollution

“…Recent analyses of satellite measurements of the aerosol optical depth and cloud top pressure also suggested a correlation between the presence of aerosols and the structural properties of clouds, indicating a likely cloud invigoration by pollution (8). In addition, enhanced deep convection and mixed-phase processes associated with urban pollution have been implicated in elevated electrification and lightning activities in thunderstorms (9)(10)(11).…”

Estimation of cloud condensation nuclei concentration from aerosol optical quantities: influential factors and uncertainties

“…Aerosols can modify microphysical and macroscopic cloud properties, such as cloud particle size, cloud albedo (Twomey, 1977;Twomey et al, 1984;Rosenfeld et al, 2001;Andreae et al, 2004;Koren et al, 2005) and cloud-top heights (Andreae et al, 2004;Lin et al, 2006;. They can also influence warmand cold-rain processes (Rosenfeld and Woodley, 2000;Andreae et al, 2004;Lin et al, 2006;Bell et al, 2008;, the depth of the mixed-phase region in a cloud (Andreae et al, 2004;Koren et al, 2005Koren et al, , 2008Koren et al, , 2010Niu and Li, 2012) and the occurrence of lightning (Orville et al, 2001;Steiger and Orville, 2003;Yuan et al, 2011;Yang et al, 2013). These are known as aerosol's indirect effects, which are the largest sources of uncertainty in the forcing of Earth's climate system.…”