Cargo ships trigger lightning storms

• Autores: Lakshmi Supriya
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3144, 2017, pág. 16
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Joel Thornton at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues looked at records of lightning strikes between 2005 and 2016 and noticed there were significantly more strikes in certain regions of the east Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, compared with the surrounding areas. The team concluded that aerosols from the ships' engine exhausts were the culprit, were aerosol particles act as seeds, around which water vapour condenses into cloud droplets. A key giveaway that aerosols were behind the effect was that the lightning was most pronounced at times of the year when powerful atmospheric convection currents form that can carry the aerosol particles high into the sky.