Hello Andrew, The development of lectric fields in thunderstorms is produced by the rebounding collisions of ice crystals with small hail (graupel) in the presence of supercooled water droplets.To produce appreciable lightning significant atmospheric instability is required and the clouds need to be at least 3 or 4 Km deep, with cloud-top temperature colder tharn -20C. Updraught speeds of at least 6-10m/s are required , and are often much greater.The amount of energy involved is prodigious. The only possible route to change thunderstorm activity that I am aware of is to over-seed them with ice-forming particles - silver iodide the best known material - so that hail formation is suppressed (thus associated hail damage), with a reduction of lightning activity, which I think is not what you want.
Basically, I feel that thunderstorms are too energetic and localised for significant modification. In my view the same is true for hurricanes. Far better, in the latter case, to use some scheme for cooling the surface waters in regions where hurricanes form(via Marine Cloud Brighteing (see AGU poster) or the Seitz microbubble approach).in order to weaken the hurricane development. Cheers, John. lat...@ucar.edu John Latham Address: P.O. Box 3000,MMM,NCAR,Boulder,CO 80307-3000 Email: lat...@ucar.edu or john.latha...@manchester.ac.uk Tel: (US-Work) 303-497-8182 or (US-Home) 303-444-2429 or (US-Cell) 303-882-0724 or (UK) 01928-730-002 http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/people/latham ________________________________________ From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [geoengineering@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Andrew Lockley [andrew.lock...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, December 05, 2011 8:00 AM To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Thunder and lightning Lightning creates NOx which degrades methane. It's a major source of natural NOx, I'm advised. This is likely climate significant, although I don't have figures. Thunderstorms also redistribute heat and moisture, although I'm not sure if either is significant. We've looked at killing hurricanes. Could we use a similar but reverse approach to make thunderstorms? A -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
