Date:   10/27/2010 6:37:57 AM ( 14 y ago)
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http://www.abc.net.au/nature/thunderheads/science.htm




Thunderheads

The Science

There are roughly 2000 thunderstorms in progress around the world at any one time producing about 30 to 100 cloud to ground flashes each second or about five million flashes a day. But thunderstorms produce much more than just lightning bolts. Heat from lightning flashes produces 100 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilizer every year. Five times hotter than the sun, every 10,000,000 volts of a lightning bolt creates new molecules, such as NOx - which is then deposited into the stratosphere where it can affect other compounds such as ozone. Thunderheads also deliver vast quantities of water vapour into the stratosphere - the greatest 'green-house gas' on earth.

Thunderstorms are not isolated events - they have manifold repercussions around the world. They can create 'gravity waves', an atmospheric tremor highly dangerous for high flying aircraft.

They also produce strange lightning phenomenon, only recently documented - such as 'sprites' and 'jets'. This lightning goes up out of the clouds, some of it into space - and far more powerful than ordinary lightning.

The atmosphere is still, in many ways, a frontier. And remarkably inadequate information exists on how thunderheads actually function.

How much water do they transport into the stratosphere and higher atmosphere? How are they affected by 'aerosols', tiny airborne particles of smoke and dust? Why do forest fires and other sources of airborne pollution make thunderstorms more powerful, more dangerous?

How exactly are they born? What happens after a thunderstorm dies?

The ICE team is particularly interested in the 'ice clouds' left behind by thunderstorms. Thunderheads push so high that the water coming out of the top is snap-frozen into tiny ice crystals. The size of these crystals determines whether the ice-clouds, also known as cirrus clouds, reflect the sun's heat or trap it.

And what of vast thunderstorm systems such as the Indian Monsoon? May it be changing? Is the weather system that dominates the lives of 1 billion people from India to China - growing more ferocious, and wetter? Or is the Monsoon weakening, with potentially catastrophic consequences in terms of many people's reliance on water?

Employing the latest in space technology - such as the recently launched CloudSat and Calipso satellites - the TWP-ICE experiment is the beginning of answers to these monumental questions.

Thunderstorms are the key. The ICE experiment hopes to develop a far better idea of how thunderstorms function, how they affect other clouds and ultimately how they help regulate the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.




Lightening can strike as much as 16km away from the rain area of a thunderstorm

 

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