Brazil is one of the countries with the highest incidence of lightning, with an average of 77.8 million annual records. The number, however, is minimal compared to the total registered in the last two years. In the year 2021, there were 154 million notes of the phenomenon on Brazilian soil. Already in 2020, there were 126 million. Therefore, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazil will have an increase in annual lightning. The expectation is that, by the end of this century, the Brazilian average will be 100 million per year.
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Climate changes
According to the coordinator of INPE's Atmospheric Electricity Group, Osmar Pinto Júnior, climate change has a great influence on this phenomenon. This is due to the fact that storms and lightning increase due to air humidity and high temperatures.
He also highlights that the constancy is even greater during the spring and summer months, as it is in this season that the phenomenon is more likely to happen.
incidence of rays
The INPE coordinator explains that, according to the literature, the incidence of the phenomenon in Brazil was analyzed from the relationship of lightning with some of the meteorological conditions predicted by the Global Climate Models (MCG).
“These models, unlike the meteorological models routinely used in weather forecasting, time, allow estimating meteorological conditions for more distant periods, on the order of decades. To minimize uncertainties in the results generated by the MCG, we ran the model 12 times considering small differences in the evolution of environmental conditions and we calculated the average of the results", said the coordinator to Agência Brazil.
The study also makes use of a greenhouse gas emissions scenario that “corresponds to no no significant change in emissions” in the coming decades, which seems, according to him, to be more likely.
“In this scenario, an increase in the average global temperature of four degrees Celsius is expected by the end of the century, compared to the period from 1961 to 1990”, he adds. In addition, according to the expert, “the general pattern of geographic distribution of lightning in the country should not be change by the end of the century, with the North region maintaining the highest incidence and the Northeast region the lowest incidence".
It is predicted that the highest increases in the occurrence of lightning occur in the North Region (50%). However, in the Northeast Region, there should be minimal growth (10%). “The other regions should have increases in the occurrence of lightning between 20% and 40%. Larger increases may occur in small localized regions,” he said.
“Thus, the current incidence of 70 million lightning strikes per year in the country should increase to 100 million lightning strikes per year”, he concluded.
world ranking
Brazil leads the ranking of incidence of lightning per year. The second place belongs to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 43.2 million annual lightning strikes. In third place is the United States, with 35 million lightning strikes per year, followed by Australia (31.2 million strikes), China (28 million) and India (26.9 million).
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