Lightning Storms Cause Sea Ice To Melt Faster on the North Pole, Study Reveals

Lightning is a natural phenomenon which most people are familiar with. This giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere is extremely rare in the Arctic region of the North Pole because of intense cold temperatures.

However, global warming has caused lightning storms to become more common on the North Pole during the summer, affecting the melting process of the ice sheets.

Rapid Ice Loss in the Arctic

The Arctic region is located north of the Earth at 66.5 degrees latitude. Around the North Pole, the heart of this region has no land. Instead, it is covered with a thick layer of sea ice which measures almost 5 million square miles (8 million square kilometers). The white ice plays an important role in cooling our planet by reflecting the rays from the Sun.

In recent decades, the ice cover in the Arctic has retreated at a rate of about 12.6% per decade. This contributes to the issue of warming in the region where temperature rises at an accelerating rate of 4 degrees.

The retreat of the sea ice even increases Arctic warming, since the dark areas of the ocean under the ice sheets absorb the rays of the Sun instead of reflecting them back in space. As a result, a feedback loop is created, where ice loss increases the warming which in turn increases the melting of the ice sheets.

The phenomenon of melting ice sheets in the North and South Pole was first attributed to the result of human activity. The emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere creates a "blanket" which preserves the heat and prevents it from escaping into space.

However, previous studies have not found a direct connection between greenhouse gas concentration and the rate of sea ice melting. Because of this, experts looked for possible effects of another factor.

Role of Lightning in Polar Ice Melt

In a recent international study, a team of researchers has found that aside from the general warming of the planet, lightning storms also directly hasten the ongoing process of sea ice in the polar region. The details of their study is discussed in the paper Are thunderstorms linked to the rapid Sea ice loss in the Arctic?

Led by Prof. Clin Price and Tair Plotnik from Tel-Aviv University, the research team compared images from NASA satellites and lightning data collected by the global network WWLLN which includes 70 lightning detecting stations. They gathered data on lightning in the North Pole during the summer months of June, July, and August every year since 2010.

A statistical analysis of melting ice sheets and the number of lightning storms revealed a surprising correlation. As the number of storms increased in a particular year, so did the melting of the sea ice.

According to the researchers, thunderstorms act as a giant vacuum cleaner which sucks water vapor up from the surface layer to the upper layer of the atmosphere. As a result, water vapor accumulates and acts like an additional blanket which traps the surface heat and prevents it from leaving. This increases surface temperature, just like man-made greenhouse gases.