Abstract
Abstract. Thunderstorm and cloud activities sometimes show a 27-day period, and this has long been studied to uncover a possible important link to solar rotation. Because the 27-day variations in the solar forcing parameters such as solar ultraviolet and galactic cosmic rays become more prominent when the solar activity is high, it is expected that the signal of the 27-day period in meteorological phenomena may wax and wane according to the changes in the solar activity level. In this study, we examine in detail the intensity variations in the signal of the 27-day solar rotational period in thunder and lightning activity from the 18th to the 19th centuries based on 150-year-long records found in old diaries kept in Japan and discuss their relation with the solar activity levels. Such long records enable us to examine the signals of solar rotation at both high and low solar activity levels. We found that the signal of the solar rotational period in the thunder and lightning activity increases as the solar activity increases. In this study, we also discuss the possibility of the impact of the long-term climatological conditions on the signals of the 27-day period in thunder/lightning activities. Keywords. Meteorology and atmospheric dynamics (lightning)
Highlights
Thunderstorm activity sometimes shows a period of approximately 27 days, which is comparable to the solar rotational period
The amplitudes of the Schumann resonance, which are excited by lightning activity, exhibit a solar rotational period near the maxima of solar decadal cycles, e.g., in AD 1990 (Füllekrug and Fraser-Smith, 1996) and during the period of AD 2000–2002 (Sato and Fukunishi, 2005), the Schumann resonance is influenced by the change in the ionospheric conditions that are under the impact of solar activity and it may not be directly reflecting
Based on the 150-year-long records of thunder and lightning activity retrieved from old diaries kept in Tokyo and Hirosaki in Japan during the 18th to 19th centuries, we examined in detail the persistency and temporal variations in the 27-day solar rotational period in the thunder/lightning activity
Summary
Thunderstorm activity sometimes shows a period of approximately 27 days, which is comparable to the solar rotational period. A relatively longer record of thunder and lightning activity since AD 1989 in Japan has shown a signal of solar rotational period near the maxima of the solar decadal cycle (Miyahara et al, 2017a). The amplitudes of the Schumann resonance, which are excited by lightning activity, exhibit a solar rotational period near the maxima of solar decadal cycles, e.g., in AD 1990 (Füllekrug and Fraser-Smith, 1996) and during the period of AD 2000–2002 (Sato and Fukunishi, 2005), the Schumann resonance is influenced by the change in the ionospheric conditions that are under the impact of solar activity and it may not be directly reflecting
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