As if we don’t have enough to worry about with climate change already, a study found that lightning strikes in the United States will likely increase by nearly 50 percent by the end of the century as the world gets warmer and wetter.
Here is an excerpt from an AP article:
[Researchers] concluded that for every degree Fahrenheit the world warms in the future, lightning strikes will go up nearly 7 percent. That’s 12 percent for every degree Celsius.
Because scientists forecast that the world may get about 7 degrees warmer (4 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, based on current carbon dioxide emission trends, that comes to a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes, said David Romps. He’s the atmospheric scientist at the University of California Berkeley who led the study.
“When you used to have two lightning strikes, now you’ll have three,” Romps said. “It’s a substantial increase.”
