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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

Chun Chang Places Second in Annual Berkeley Lab Pitch Competition3 min read

January 18, 2023

Commercializing Berkeley Lab inventions is an important part of the Lab’s mission, and one that requires strong communication skills. For example, Lab inventors need to be able to pitch their ideas to external partners and potential funders.  The annual Berkeley Lab Pitch Competition occurred on October 27, 2022 and is a part of an entrepreneurship…

EESA Scientists Collaborate With Universities to bring Environmental Science Research Opportunities and Training to Students Underrepresented in STEM3 min read

January 13, 2023

  EESA researchers are collaborators in three of the 41 projects awarded in December by DOE through its Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative.  RENEW aims to build foundations for research at institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science (SC) research portfolio. The initiative provides opportunities for undergraduate and…

New Report Explores Revolutionary Environmental Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure5 min read

January 10, 2023

In a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, as well as with community experts, the Artificial Intelligence for Earth System Predictability (AI4ESP) workshop was held from October through December 2021. BER developed the process as the Model-Experiment paradigm, or ModEx, and a report released this fall outlines the key takeaways of last year’s event.

A Q&A With Postdoc Kunxiaoja Yuan3 min read

January 4, 2023

  Kunxiaojia Yuan received her Bachelor’s of Engineering in remote sensing and Ph.D. in geographic information engineering from Wuhan University. She is a postdoctoral researcher in EESA, with a research focus on global carbon, energy, and water cycle analysis and model evaluation using machine learning and causal inference. What motivated you to pursue a postdoc…

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