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EESA Climate Experts Co-Author Study Predicting 100% Increase in Arctic Lightning2 min read

by Christina Procopiou on April 5, 2021

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division
lightening strike

Zelalem Mekonnen, Bill Riley, and David Romps co-authored a new paper predicting a 100% increase in Arctic lightning strikes this century. (credit: Shutterstock)

EESA climate scientists contributed to the stunning discovery that lightning strikes will increase by 100% this century above the Arctic Circle, where lightning is practically unheard of, due to climate warming. A paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change describes how such an increase in lightning will drive further warming and wildfires across the region.

Berkeley Lab Research Scientist Zelalem Mekonnen and Senior Scientist Bill Riley are among the paper’s co-authors; as is EESA Faculty Scientist David Romps, whose previous work predicted a 50% increase in lightning strikes across the country this century due to warming from climate change. A 2019 paper by Mekonnen and Riley, which found that Alaska’s iconic evergreen conifer trees would be pushed out in favor of broadleaf deciduous trees in a warmer climate with more wildfires, was also of relevance to the new UC-Irvine led research.

“In our study of Alaska forests we found that boreal forest dynamics were controlled by interactions between wildfire, climate warming, nutrient availability, and plant traits affecting regrowth,” said Mekonnen. “This new paper illustrates how an increase in lightning strikes could exacerbate wildfire frequency. These fires would strip away protective layers of moss and dead organic matter that insulate perennially frozen soils which define much of the Arctic. The worry is that with thawing permafrost there could be planet-warming greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere to drive even more warming.”

The new research led by Yang Chen of UC-Irvine is the first to estimate how lightning is changing in this high-latitude region. Inspired by the finding that 2015 was a record year for wildfires in Alaska, Chen’s team set out to model 21st-century lightning strikes as a function of a rise in rainfall resulting from warming-driven evaporation, using a 20+-year NASA satellite dataset on Arctic lighting strikes. 

The consequences of a surge in lightning strikes are intense: The researchers believe that their findings provide a glimpse into the changes in store for high latitudes as the planet continues to warm, and even anticipate Arctic weather conditions closer to those seen today in the middle of the U.S. where lightning storms are commonplace. 

The work, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA’s Interdisciplinary Science and Carbon Monitoring System programs, and the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment Arctic project, includes researchers from the University of California Irvine, University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Harvard University, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

News & Events

Joint Berkeley Initiative for Microbiome Sciences Hosts Microbes in a Changing Planet Symposium3 min read

November 10, 2023

The Joint Berkeley Initiative for Microbiome Sciences (JBIMS), co-led by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, held an all-day “Microbes in a Changing Planet” symposium at UC Berkeley’s International House on November 3. Over 110 people from 11 institutions, including undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and lab scientists, attended to share their work regarding Earth’s microbiomes,…

2023 ESS-DIVE Open Data Workshop (ODW) to Propel Environmental System Science Projects into the Future4 min read

November 6, 2023

The Environmental Systems Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE) team will host a free, virtual Open Data Workshop from Wednesday, November 15 to Thursday, November 16, 2023, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. PT / 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET. This workshop is targeted for anyone who is part of a DOE Environmental…

Study Sheds Light on Microbial Communities in Earth’s Subsurface2 min read

August 16, 2023

  From the tops of tree canopies to the bottom of groundwater reservoirs, a vast amount of living organisms interact with nonliving components such as rock, water, and soil to shape this area of Earth known as the “critical zone.” Over half of Earth’s microbes are located in the subsurface critical zone, which ranges from…

Carl Steefel Honored in Goldschmidt Session on Reactive Transport2 min read

August 2, 2023

The contributions of Carl Steefel to the reactive transport modeling scientific community were recognized in a session held in his honor at the recent Goldschmidt 2023 conference (Lyon, France). Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society. The session was…

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