Lightning Enhancement in Moist Convection With Smoke‐Laden Air Advected From Australian Wildfires
Name
10.1029-2020GL092355.pdf
Size
1.76 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
032bf80b7b1463d99ac9566c50971dac
Author(s)
Liu, Y.
Williams, E.
Li, Z.
Guha, A.
Lapierre, J.
Stock, M.
Heckman, S.
Zhang, Y.
DiGangi, E.
Date Issued
May 11, 2021
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Liu, Y., Williams, E., Li, Z., Guha, A., Lapierre, J., Stock, M., et al. (2021). Lightning enhancement in moist convection with smoke-laden air advected from Australian wildfires. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL092355.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The 2019–2020 Australian wildfire crisis broke the historical bushfire record and heavily contaminated the continental and offshore atmosphere. This study found that lightning strokes increase considerably, by 73% over land and 270% over ocean, during the wildfire season. Thermodynamic parameters support a weaker forcing, unfavorable for frequent lightning activity over ocean. Clear augmentation of smaller cloud ice particles is identified with aerosol, while cloud liquid water path changes are feeble over ocean. Added aerosol invigorates positive intra-cloud (IC) strokes and negative cloud-to-ground (CG) strokes in moist oceanic convection and facilitates a noticeable positive correlation between precipitation and lightning strokes. Rainfall events accompanied by lightning increase by 240% with added aerosol. Aerosol advected from land to ocean can lead to a larger hydrometeor concentration and smaller-size ice crystals above the freezing level and thereby, invigorate convective strength systematically to stimulate more frequent and more robust mixed-phase development, energizing the lightning discharge process.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020gl092355
