Your conclusion makes no sense. I live Porto Alegre, city where this lightning was measured.
We always had this kind of phenomena, always a great spectacle. Lighting strikes a lot more here because of combination of factors: Relative flat terrain, no hills, and proximity with the ocean.
It's in the climate change section of the website. I can kind of see a cause and effect (but knowing very little about the topic this may be completely bogus): You add energy to the weather, clouds are bigger and winds are faster, and that translates to increased lightning.
Whilst you may see variations in area's, globally afaik the rate of lightning strikes hasn't changed at all, least I've not read anything stating that and if there was, I'd of thought that would of air publicly via the media decades ago.
Which is a shame as can imagine some types of people being a little more mindful climate wise if they got told that the odds of them getting killed by lighting will increase due to their actions. Alas that is not the case, shame as make things easier to communicate to those that need such communication.
But we are still learning about lightning, indeed I also would of thought extra particulate matter in the atmosphere would see more friction and with that lightning and that does not appear to be the case as clear cut and no hockey stick lighting rate increase globally.
Though of interest and related would be lightning formed by certain volcano eruptions, which does give some weight to extra particulates would make an increase in lightning, but then, we just don't see that globally and shows how much we don't know still about lightning. Let alone space lighting, which we didn't even know about a few decades back.
The only explanation offered in the article is that we have better technology for detecting these events now. It's irresponsible to link it to climate change, even though the link is superficially plausible.
> “Environmental extremes are living measurements of what nature is capable of, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments”, he added.
> “It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves.”
Increased thunderstorms is a fairly straight forward consequence of more heat in the atmosphere. Thunderstorm formation is basically enormous thermals/dust devils that keep growing. More heat == more vigorous thermals == more thunderstorms if the atmosphere is primed to create thunderstorms. Yes there is more to it, cumulus clouds form, convection sets up, etc, but the basic mechanism of a heat source triggering a convective storm is pretty well developed.
Obviously there are a lot of variables at play so it wouldn't surprise me if there are not well conducted studies at this point.
> 'Most previous studies project an increase in global lightning with climate change over the coming century, but these typically use parameterizations of lightning that neglect cloud ice fluxes, a component generally considered to be fundamental to thunderstorm charging. As such, the response of lightning to climate change is uncertain. [...] In contrast to the previously reported global increase in lightning based on CTH, we find a 15% decrease in total lightning flash rate with IFLUX in 2100 under a strong global warming scenario.'
> 'Many published analyses show that lightning activity is responsive to temperature on time scales ranging from the diurnal to the decadal. The hiatus in global warming is manifest in several global datasets in the decadal period 2002–2013. The statistically flat behavior of the global lightning record from the NASA Lightning Imaging Sensor over the same period is consistent with this hiatus in global warming.'
Absolutely, it is quite likely bogus. I would love to know if the website really meant to connect this to climate change, and if so what the mechanism is.
What is needed is a graph of global lightning strikes increasing inline with global temperature rise and that does not exist, afaik - globally lightning strikes have been consistent year on year. But nowt jumping out google wise and would of thought if lighting increased, we would know. Equally if the strength of lightning increased, that would also be measured and known.
However there is data of lightning in some area's increasing, others less so and does seem to balance out, but not clear cut data set to know for sure upon that one.
