Lightning activity in northern Europe during a stormy winter: disruptions of weather patterns originating in global climate phenomena

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378289%3A_____%2F22%3A00555417" target="_blank" >RIV/68378289:_____/22:00555417 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/00216208:11320/22:10456480

Result on the web

<a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/3379/2022/" target="_blank" >https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/3379/2022/</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-3379-2022" target="_blank" >10.5194/acp-22-3379-2022</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Lightning activity in northern Europe during a stormy winter: disruptions of weather patterns originating in global climate phenomena

Original language description

In this study, we use World Wide Lightning Location Network data and investigate properties of more than 90 000 lightning strokes which hit northern Europe during an unusually stormy winter in 2014/15. Thunderstorm days with at least two strokes hitting an area of 0.5∘ × 0.5∘ occurred 5–13 times per month in the stormiest regions. Such frequency of thunderstorm days is about 5 times higher than the mean annual number calculated for the same region over winter months in 2008–2017. The number of individual winter lightning strokes was about 4 times larger than the long-term median calculated over the last decade. In the colder months of December, January and February, the mean energy of detected strokes was 2 orders of magnitude larger than the global mean stroke energy of 1 kJ. We show for the first time that winter superbolts with radiated electromagnetic energies above 1 MJ appeared at night and in the morning hours, while the diurnal distribution of all detected lightning was nearly uniform. We also show that the superbolts were often single stroke flashes and that their subsequent strokes never reached megajoule energies. The lightning strokes were concentrated above the ocean close to the western coastal areas. All these lightning characteristics presume anomalously efficient winter thundercloud charging in the eastern North Atlantic, especially at the sea–land boundary. We found that the resulting unusual production of lightning could not be explained solely by an anomalously warm sea surface caused by a positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation and by a starting super El Niño event. Increased updraft strengths, which are believed to accompany the cold-to-warm transition phase of El Niño, might have acted as another charging driver. We speculate that a combination of both these large-scale climatic events might have been needed to produce the observed enormous amount of winter lightning in winter 2014/15.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

10305 - Fluids and plasma physics (including surface physics)

Project

Result was created during the realization of more than one project. More information in the Projects tab.

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ISSN

1680-7316

e-ISSN

1680-7324

Volume of the periodical

22

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5

Country of publishing house

DE - GERMANY

Number of pages

11

Pages from-to

3379-3389

UT code for WoS article

000780233700001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85127170404