As world warms, U.S. may get more lightning

As reported in 'The Japan News' : The Associated Press, In this Sept. 11, 2013, file photo, lightning strikes north of Macworth Island in Portland, Maine

The Associated Press, WASHINGTON (AP) — Lightning strikes in the United States will likely increase by nearly 50 percent by the end of the century as the world gets warmer and wetter, a new study says. While those conditions were already known to promote thunderstorms in general, the new work focused on lightning strikes themselves. Researchers calculated just how much lightning flashes increase as air warms, clouds fill with more energy from water vapor and rainfall intensifies. They concluded that for every degree Fahrenheit the world warms in the future, lightning strikes will go up nearly 7 percent. That’s 12 percent for every degree Celsius. Because scientists forecast that the world may get about 4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century, based on current carbon dioxide emission trends, that comes to a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes, said David Romps. He’s the atmospheric scientist at the University of California Berkeley who led the study.Speech