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Geography
Pradeep Kumar

18/07/21 10:20 AM IST

Rare Arctic lightning storms strike north of Alaska

In news

Three successive thunderstorms swept across the icy Arctic from Siberia to north of Alaska, unleashing lightning bolts in an unusual phenomenon that scientists say will become less rare with global warming.

Details
  • The air over the Arctic Ocean, especially when the water is covered with ice, lacks the convective heat needed to generate lightning storms.
  • But as climate change warms the Arctic faster than the rest of the world, that's changing, scientists say.
  • Episodes of summer lightning within the Arctic Circle have tripled since 2010, a trend directly tied to climate change and increasing loss of sea ice in the far north, scientists reported in a March study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
  • These electrical storms threaten boreal forests fringing the Arctic, as they spark fires in remote regions already baking under the round-the-clock summer sun.
  • In Alaska alone, thunderstorm activity is on track to increase threefold by the end of the century if current climate trends continue, according to two studies by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, published over the last year in the journal Climate Dynamics.
Source: The Hindu

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