Research paper: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/25/2937/2025/
I would imagine that a column of soot-containing air is more conductive if it contains oxides of sulfur than if it does not.
The same electrical potential may still be present in the clouds, but instead of being neutralized dramatically it could now be dissipating slowly rather than gone in a flash :)
More study would be good to have.
Not just lightning apparently. SO2 masked for decades the global warming, and here we are.
I wonder if this has implications for geo-engineering projects that want to inject sulfur into the atmosphere. More lightning seems like a problematic side effect.
It feels like there’s something mythological about less brimstone attracting less ire from the gods
Now that the US is eliminating satelite based monitering of emmisions there is no way to do a definitive study on S0² concentrations over shipping lanes, and the earlier tentative conclusions will have to be disregarded. The very far fetched conjecture that adding S0² emmisions into the stratosphere without actualy increasing C0² and water vapor related and overall heat gain, is maddness.
So could this be used in reverse to map SO2 emissions by looking at frequency of lightning strikes across the world? Lightning data is already available from satellites. Looking at various lightning maps the strongest correlation is with storms, but perhaps some statistical magic could extract other signals?
Lightning is a chemical reaction? Fascinating.
Very interesting, but this article is kind of a mess and all over the place.
I would expect a shipping lane to have more or less than baseline amounts of lightening regardless of soot on the basis of it being generally more churned up and therefore having slightly different potential than the rest of the ground (which just happens to be liquid water in this case).
It's not clear to me if the study is isolating the variable they're measuring properly.
Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.
Additionally, it's well known that having a bunch of crap (including water) suspended in the air to bridge the gaps makes it easier for electricity to arc so it's not clear if and/or to what extent this the change a result of sulfer emissions or particulate generally.
It's also well known that particulate facilitates condensation (the article talks about this).
I do have one experience with Singaporean lightning, pre the 2020 regulation! I was on a ship that was anchored overnight for fueling right outside of the port of Singapore, and saw an otherworldly scene. I was on the smoke-deck in a storm, late at night. There was lightning every 5 seconds, the port in the distance, horizontal rain, dozens of huge cargo ships around, and some gigantic flames coming from land that looked like Mordor (a refinery or plant of some sort?).
Not sure if the crazy lightning was because of sulfur, but I still remember it!