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!
Smoke-deck?
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.
>The same electrical potential may still be present in the clouds
I wouldn't jump to this lemma so quickly. The paper mentions the density of aerosols. Sulfur oxides promote condensation by forming low-volatility compounds like H2SO3 and H2SO4. An increase in the number density of droplets could mean more triboelectric charge transfer between the droplets and the air. That would increase the amount of electric energy in the clouds.
This is also the mechanism by which sulfur has been proposed for geoengineering, but I think the variant that replaces sulfur with terpenes sounds safer.
Yeah, nothing could go wrong with actively engineering more acid rain.
The proposed mechanism would cause more lightning, not less.
I expect it's related to how lightning is triggered, not changes in atmospheric charge due to conductivity.
Maybe there’s a parasitic bipolar transistor in the atmosphere, with sulphur acting as a doping that reduced the threshold for latchup.
Maybe so, but honestly that seems just as contrived. Surely we should be looking for the atmospheric science nerds to be chiming in here, not the computer engineering or EE nerds?
Problem is, atmospheric science isn't exactly considered "high status" vs the other two.
A little tangential, but I wonder if the decrease in ball lightning sightings is related to a decrease in particulate matter in the atmosphere as a result of less open-flame burning (hearths and whatnot).
> 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
That was my initial thought, like a “phantom power” drain, the process by which electrons knock each other is able to happen in a broad manner, not concentrated in the poles and suddenly discharging among a single path, i.e., lightning.
It seems similar to how static electricity builds up easier in dry environments because in humid ones the electrons can more easily equalize across water molecules.
Not just lightning apparently. SO2 masked for decades the global warming, and here we are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Sadly misunderstood by a bunch of people.
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Aerosol injection is only a reasonable solution if you believe that temperature increase is the only drawback of additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
The oceans will continue to soak it all up as we inject temp-balancing aerosols.
It is the primary drawback. The main issue was always the thermal effects, and it's not even close.
Are you a climate scientist? Do you have any understanding of how co2 lowers alkalinity in a solution or what impacts that might have on the planet? It seems sort sighted to say “it’s not even close”
Ocean acidification is small fries compared to how much impact thermal effects have. Just about every area of concern when it comes to climate change - heat waves and extreme weather events, agricultural impacts, sea level rise - comes from thermal imbalance alone.
Yes, it's "not even close".
Wouldn’t it be wise to reduce our output, rather than pump something else into the atmosphere?
Can you "reduce output" globally, to negative values, within the next 5 years?
Because that's what's required to match the predicted effects of doing stratospheric aerosol injection at scale.
Currently, the temperature is still "chasing down" the sheer amount of CO2 that was emitted over time. Even the completely unrealistic scenario of reducing emissions to zero instantly would cause climate change to continue for a while.
Geoengineering offers a range of sharp, cost-effective interventions that can knock the temperature down more quickly and more directly.
Why not both?
you just restated what you already said in response to the question, "do you know what you're talking about?"
i'm not judging either way, i'm not a climate scientist and i have no opinion on the importance of ocean acidification, i just find it obnoxious when someone's asked to defend their position and they just say it again, but _harder_.
Unfortunately, I do know what I'm talking about. Which is where my sheer hatred for environmental activists is coming from.
The top 3 enemies of doing something about climate change are: fossil fuel megacorp PR and lobbying efforts (no surprise), mainstream media (little to no surprise) and environmental activists (fucking why).
I agree that we need to have a conversation about geo engineering. And I've been staying up to date with the sulphur regulation thing. That being said what do you think of the position that we should avoid temporary solutions to global warming in order to drive a sense of urgency? You could make the argument that we want the slope of temperature change to be as high as possible in the near term to drive political action. Again I have no doubt that geo engineering will become the only viable solution. But right now a significant % of tbe population doesnt even believe in climate change and wouldnt support any action taken. So maybe they need to be convinced - and so far education hasn't convinced them so maybe 5 degrees fahrenheit will.
I do not think that "climate change accelerationism" is a defensible position.
We are fighting climate change not to feel good about ourselves, but to prevent those higher-degree impacts from happening in the first place.
What's worse is that climate change has a considerable momentum. If you resolve to hit +2C before taking climate action, then even stopping all GHG emissions instantly would leave you with another ~+1C that would trickle in over time. In reality, there is no fucking way to obliterate all GHG emissions overnight.
Geoengineering solves a lot, but it doesn't delete all of the problems outright. Unless you commit to some truly unhinged methods. Which might not be the worst idea, really - but then every problem we have with making geoengineering happen apples at least tenfold.
Yeah I was mostly playing Devil's advocate. This sulphur cloud thing has been driving me nuts for over a year so I've entertained the accelerationist concept to save my sanity. It's incredible that it's not talked about more and yes it does call into question the rationality of many climate activists. At the end of the day I don't think the monkey brain evolved to handle this type of decision making.
I don't think it's the environmentalists stopping atmospheric tampering, it's other things like the economics of it, or some countries being very against it.
Geoengineers have talked seriously about this for a long time, but it's a mostly a political issue, then who actually wants to pay to do the science and pay for the outcomes, when you've got no real idea who will get destroyed in the long run.
Is Europe going to help fund it, with a consequence being they have less rainfall? Nobody really knows, so no one really wants to pay to do it at scale, forever.
Right. Like one thing that cancer needs is oxygen. So if we stop breathing (instead of laboriously stopping smoking--that's hard), then we can slow down cancer.
I sense you were trying to make a different point than what you made. Cancer _is_ treated in that way, that is basically how chemo works.
Whoosh. No, chemotherapy is not the same as holding your breath, and no, most cancer drugs don't have anything to do with oxygen, except the (unwanted) side effect that they can lower red blood cell count, causing anemia and low oxygen levels.
The whole developed world is self-sabotaging. Environmentalists are just the messengers.
Injection also isn't guaranteed to help. Adding clouds temporarily doesn't decrease co2 in the atmosphere.
These guys are doing well https://makesunsets.com/
Dear downvoter, please tell me what you didn’t like about my comment because I cannot make any sense of it.
Gotta love when the mods reset an article and a comment that's mildly popular with the weekday crowd goes to shit.
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.
AIUI those plans typically involve injecting e.g. sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere specifically, not the atmosphere as a whole. Lightning can sometimes occur that high, but it's definitely not the norm.
There's all kinds of weather events in the upper atmosphere, including lightning-like. They're mostly understudied from difficulty in studying them, not because they don't exist.
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Doesn't lightning help make ozone? And lightining does help make hydroxyl ions, which help convert airisol methane.
Could also help make lightning rods more efficient. Make them spout sulfur.
Wait, that explains why volcanoes always have a cloud full of lightnings too, when they erupt.
Okay, I think you're being facetious, but just in case, my understanding is that the lightning from eruptions is a form of static electricity.
Aren't there some wild power generation ideas of harvesting lightning?
Average power output from lightning is terrible, but the spikes are pretty amazing.
I think there is only one spot in the planet that gets enough regular lightning to maybe be worth something (a random place in Venezuela, oddly), otherwise it isn’t worth the Capital.
It feels like there’s something mythological about less brimstone attracting less ire from the gods
Perhaps they should put altars to Zeus on the ships.
And then Poseidon is envious and takes you down with giant whirlpools or sea monsters! ;)
Good point. I guess that’s why they didn’t already have Zeus altars.
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?
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.
Lightning is a chemical reaction? Fascinating.
Not quite. The emissions act as an electrically conductive medium. In a roundabout way it's similar to how pure and deionized water is an insulator, but tap water is conductive because of various impurities.
Well, a chemical is introduced and there’s a reaction. We can nitpick about the details but that’s the crux of it,
Imagine coughing up those blasé closing words to a topic of physics that scientists are trying to unravel. "Well, we can nitpick about the details, but that's the crux of it."
Imagine not being able to look at things abstractly; to use a different lens. And instead being lazy and taking everything simply at face value, as is, as it’s spoon fed to you.
The correct reply was: “Yes. Via that lens it makes me wonder if there are not other similar catalysts that we’ve been missing.”
Sorry mate. Small ideas from small minds don’t excite me. Have a nice day.
Interestingly, chemistry is an electrical reaction (electron interactions). So it might be more accurate to say both are mediated through the same underlying force - electromagnetism.
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).
Yes, and sulfur isn't the only cloud nucleation trigger. Refineries of ship 'bunker fuel' used to seek contracts from disposal companies to burn their chemical waste at sea. And dirty fuel has lots of natural vanadium. Source: oil spill around my houseboat legal case in the 1980s, fuel company had to disclose breakdown of content.
So…you emitted toxins. Not so smart.
It was a failed underwater weld between bulkheads on a oil barge and 30,000 gallons of oil caught the wind and drifted into the cove overnight. Are you thinking I poured it into the ocean myself, was suing myself?
> Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.
Isn't the shipping lane the "treatment" group and everywhere else in the world the "control" group?
Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.
> Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.
There is a reason we use placebos for control groups.
Can you explain the reason?
Otherwise the sky may realize it's in the control group.
I'm more interested in the reason the OP had in mind. I don't think it's required that you have a placebo control group, but the OP might have a reason in mind that's something I haven't considered.
Uh, there's no requirement to use placebos or a control group.
For example, covid just uses a treatment group and considers the rest of the world as control.
> 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.
As mentioned in the first paragraph of the article they are using the Global Lightning Detection Network, which is well, global. Then you just need a map of SO2 concentration and compare shipping lanes against non-shipping lanes. You don't need an explicit control group if your data includes the whole planet, since you can just compare shipping lanes against similar areas with less/no shipping. Since both lightning and SO2 also varies over time you can also correlate this way with enough data.
Hopefully you read all of the links in the article -- the purpose of thecoversation is to present information to the general public, with references to research that the author has been involved with.