Abstract
Urbanization has an increasing contribution to anthropogenic climate forcing. The impact arises mainly from the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and aerosol anthropogenic emissions. An important but not completely understood consequence of this forcing is its effect on local lightning activity. Changes in lightning activity may result in a feedback on the climate system. In this article, it investigates changes in the lightning activity in the city of Manaus, located in the Amazon region of Brazil. It is found that, over the city, the lightning activity is larger than in the regions around it and it has been increasing in the last four decades simultaneously with the increasing of its urban area. Our results suggest that such changes are caused by the UHI effect. The observations reported here are unique and relevant because Manaus is located in the central part of the Amazon rainforest and inside one of the three global lightning chimneys in the world.
Highlights
Lightning future scenario is one of the most important open questions of the Earth’s climate science
We showed that the lightning activity in the city of Manaus is larger than that in the regions around the city and it has been increasing in the last four decades with the increasing of the urban area of the city
These results suggest that these spatial and time variations are related to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, since it is believed that the UHI effect influences thunderstorm formation and evolution and, in consequence, the lightning activity
Summary
Lightning future scenario is one of the most important open questions of the Earth’s climate science. Depending on the convection parameterization adopted, it is possible to obtain GCM projections indicating an increase or, even, a decrease in the global lightning activity [3] This limitation may explain at least partially why there is no mention to future lightning scenarios in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007. The goal of this article is to present and discuss the lightning observations in the city of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil, as observed by the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) and the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) in the last decade in the context of the impact of the UHI effect on the lightning activity For this purpose, data showing the evolution of the urban area of the city in the last four decades and information about the apparent surface temperature obtained from satellite are presented. The lightning data are complemented by thunderstorm day observations in the last four decades
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