Lightning vs Temperature

...."The new study, detailed in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, has found a relatively simple way to use other atmospheric factors to predict changes in lightning rates. The findings suggest that lighting rates will increase 12 percent per every degree Celsius (about 2°F) rise in global temperatures."...Nov 13, 2014

...." A bolt of lightning flashes through the sky and hits the ground somewhere around the world about 100 times every second. That’s 8 million lightning strikes in a single day — yes, you read that right: just one day."...

https://www.climatecentral.org/news/lightning-strikes-will-increase-with-warming-18323#:~:text=The%20new%20study%2C%20detailed%20in,F)%20rise%20in%20global%20temperatures.

Back in the days of analog TV(NTSC) and AM radio,lightning could be seen and heard as snow on the TV or static on the radio.

If you de-tuned the station,via the manual fine tune knob,between channel 4 and 3, tornado static could be detected.

Could this radio frequency generated by tornadoes modeled by modern computers to be used as an early warning sign for tornadoes?

If not,why not?

How does infrasound emission connect with RF emission?

https://journals.ametsoc.org/jas/article/65/3/685/26858/Infrasound-Emitted-by-Tornado-Like-Vortices-Basic

https://www.science.gov/topicpages/i/infrasonic+radiation

There seems to be an electromagnetic field generated by the rapidly moving winds, it's well known that wind masses when rubbing together create lightning and other electrical discharges, possibly from dust in the wind...It wouldn't seem that the relationship between the two would be a constant, but I can't say for sure...

"Our model calculations show the existence of pressure resonances characterized as acoustic duct modes with well defined frequencies. These resonances not only generate infrasound but also modulate the charge density and the velocity field and in this way lead to electric and magnetic field oscillations in the 0.5–20-Hz range that can be monitored from a distance of several kilometers."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232723424_Natural_Hazards_and_Earth_System_Sciences_Brief_communication_Modeling_tornado_dynamics_and_the_generation_of_infrasound_electric_and_magnetic_fields

Triboelectric RF Enhancement

While watching the movie Twister a few years back, it struck me that you may not need Dorothy and expensive little electronic packages. You may be able to enhance existing tornado RF emissions by adding some Christmas tree aluminum tinsel and some diatomaceous earth into the spin. The triboelectric effect of the diatom shells impacting the aluminum may well generate some tinsel wavelength RF. Capturing the data could then be done quite remotely by multiple investigators using modified wifi router(OpenWRT) receivers(cheap) and deformed CD parabolic antennae. Analysis could be rather difficult but getting the "sensors" into the action would be vastly easier since both tinsel and DE would easily be sucked right in to the wall of the vortex and upward into the previously unobserved flows. I would use a hanky parachute to automatically trigger a compressed air cannon to loft the tinsel and DE at a moment when local air movement becomes strategically active. Another hacked router could be used during the event as a transmitter of time pulses along with the natural lightning pulses to time-align all the separately collected data. A drone with a router transmitter could be used to pre or post analyze the fixed gaze of each receiver for ultimate synthesis of a rendering of this large scale compound eye video of the innards of the twister.

DE might work asis or might be glued to the surface of tiny foam beads to get a more pulsed effect.

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thewildotter

He is talking about another feature of tornadoes here,the very low frequency sound that they generate,below the human hearing threshold.

This is in addition to the RF generated.

A lot of witnesses to a close encounter with a tornado describe it sounding like a freight train.

Now here's something you don't see everyday....a jet engine tornado...

I think the freight train sound comes from the turbulent air of the tornado interacting with ground, trees, buildings, etc.

I was about 200 feet from one tornado. To me it sounded like very fast, straight line wind. That tornado took out a (only one) tree across the street but did not damage the house across the street. About a block away the tornado started breaking windows and doing minor ground level damage. A neighbor in that area did describe it as sounding like a freight train.

I was about 400 feet from another tornado. All I heard was heavy rain and all I saw was a solid wall of water. No freight train sounds. I probably sat there watching the rain for 30 seconds before some sheet metal roof flashing going upward in a spiral direction made me realize that the wall of water was a tornado.

These observations might not be true in the midwest. The two tornados I was near were Florida F0 storms. They tend to travel a much shorter distance and be much weaker than midwestern storms. Florida can have deadly storms but most of our tornados spill the garbage cans and send the lawn furniture flying.

I have an app on my phone for picking up infrasounds. Now all I need is a tornado...

Actually here in winter we get a fair share of thunderstorms. I believe it has more to do with the particle velocity of the rain drops or hail falling through the atmosphere and passing from one voltage gradient to another and building up charge.

If you have you carried out any bead blasting in a sand blasting cabinet you will see some quite good sparks generated by the particles being blasted out of the nozzle and let me tell you the rubber gloves act as no deterrent to a wayward spark when the earth clip falls off.

But then what I call cold, 15C to 20C some of our northern brothers would call hot, but as a caveat we do get -5C in winter and often for several days -2c, yes I know we are just wimps but at 26.67 south surely we are entitled to have warm weather. Roll on glow ball war Ming.

Whistlers as Remote Sensors for Research

HTRN,

The temperature is widely reported locally worldwide. Satellites also provide temperature data with a great deal of resolution. So there is a boatload of real time temperature data available from multiple sources. Now the other crucial measurement you need is: where are the lightning strikes. Maybe that is sitting around out there on the web as well but maybe not. Remember that exact timing is required for each individual strike.

Whistlers are broad spectrum radio emissions from lightning strikes. These emissions travel at different velocities due to atmospheric dispersion. Since the dispersion can be quantified, the timing you perceive with a radio receiver for the initial arrival of impulse signals of the spectrum of a strike varies over time. Hi frequencies arrive first followed by lower and lower frequencies. Ham radio operators called these signals from distant lightning strikes "whistlers" because that is the sound you hear as you receive the signal. It sounds like a slide whistle as you pull the slide out of the cylinder. Experimenters have built (often VLF) receivers for whistlers which can measure the distance to the lightning strike based on the dispersion of the frequencies. The farther away the strike is, the more dispersion you get. Report this timestamped, partial triangulation information to yourself over the Web.

My point in all of this is, that with basically a few distant radios(SDR would be ideal) and some microprocessor code, you could collect distant lightning strike locations worldwide, extract from the web the reported temperature at the calculated location and do your own correlation study. Let me recommend that you circle your target strike and do a temperature gradient study simultaneously since lightning strikes probably have far more to do with sharp temperature gradients than just the temperature at the point of the strike. You will need to separate these variables. You could use, for example, the SAS statistics package to do all the hard data analysis.

Software defined radio receivers are quite cheap now and could, hooked up to say a Raspberry Pi report their data to you over the web from just a few passive collaborators assisting with triangulation of the strike point by merely plugging in one of your customized SDR radios. The temperature data is probably free. This is basic weather research possible on a tiny budget and could earn you very high level recognition without requiring PhD level understanding of meteorology. I have not looked to see if someone else has done this and they probably have, since to the casual DIY Scientific American Amateur Scientist class enthusiast the technique is obvious. If they have not, then pick that low hangin fruit.

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thewildotter

Wenzel

Here in Austin TX we have an avid hobbyist named Wenzel. He is the founder of a military crystal oscillator company. He has a great website with many DIY circuits. He has quite a few to deal with what he calls "Natural Radio."

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thewildotter

Here are two sources of lightning location data:

http://www.lightningmaps.org

http://toasystems.com/

As one moves upward in the atmosphere the temperature gets colder, of course the ground may be warmer so is it the temperature difference that cause the lightning?

I don't know how the discussion turned to tornadoes but it did.

I think what your looking to show is that global warming will produce more lightning strikes fortunately with satellites we can measure both temperature and lightning, maybe we we have a record of such events but this is something that would not be easy to do in a week, month, year, decade, only real time data could help.

Something more interesting Lightning kills the Covid-19 virus. Any associated rain with a storm cleans the air.

original topic is interesting

As one moves upward in the atmosphere the temperature gets colder, of course the ground may be warmer so is it the temperature difference that cause the lightning?

Indirectly, yes. Lightning occurs mainly in thunderstorms, thunderstorms are caused by air convection, and air convection is caused by difference in temperature.

Rising air cools naturally at about 5.3 degrees F per 1000 feet due to expansion as the pressure goes down with altitude (the dry adiabatic lapse rate). If the temperature gradient is greater than this, convection is driven as the rising air is warmer and less dense than the surrounding air. A further boost occurs when water vapor condenses, giving up its latent heat of condensation. If the convection is strong enough, the moisture coalescences into rain which falls, completing the convection cycle and friction between updrafts and downdrafts cause separation of charges and eventually, lightning.

A high-temperature gradient and thunderstorms occur in two situations -- on summer afternoons when afternoon sun heats the earth, and when a cold air mass overruns warmer air (cold front). Warmer global temperatures would likely increase the number of thunderstorms and lightning, at least in the former case.