Lightning declines over shipping lanes following regulation of sulfur emissions
15 comments
·August 19, 2025fuzzfactor
I would imagine that a column of soot-containing air is more conductive if it contains oxides of sulfur than if it does not.
The same electrical potential may still be present in the clouds, but instead of being neutralized dramatically it could now be dissipating slowly rather than gone in a flash :)
More study would be good to have.
null
sMarsIntruder
Not just lightning apparently. SO2 masked for decades the global warming, and here we are.
ccgreg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
Sadly misunderstood by a bunch of people.
ACCount37
In the meanwhile, environmentalists and "chemtrails" loons converged on being opposed to stratospheric aerosol injection. While we have even more evidence now that it would work if implemented at scale.
The amount of self-sabotage environmental movements do is mind-boggling.
Fricken
The whole developed world is self-sabotaging. Environmentalists are just the messengers.
titzer
Right. Like one thing that cancer needs is oxygen. So if we stop breathing (instead of laboriously stopping smoking--that's hard), then we can slow down cancer.
sMarsIntruder
These guys are doing well https://makesunsets.com/
potato3732842
Very interesting, but this article is kind of a mess and all over the place.
I would expect a shipping lane to have more or less than baseline amounts of lightening regardless of soot on the basis of it being generally more churned up and therefore having slightly different potential than the rest of the ground (which just happens to be liquid water in this case).
It's not clear to me if the study is isolating the variable they're measuring properly.
Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.
Additionally, it's well known that having a bunch of crap (including water) suspended in the air to bridge the gaps makes it easier for electricity to arc so it's not clear if and/or to what extent this the change a result of sulfer emissions or particulate generally.
It's also well known that particulate facilitates condensation (the article talks about this).
ccgreg
Hopefully you read all of the links in the article -- the purpose of thecoversation is to present information to the general public, with references to research that the author has been involved with.
atoav
[delayed]
lesuorac
> Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.
Isn't the shipping lane the "treatment" group and everywhere else in the world the "control" group?
Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.
jjk166
> Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.
There is a reason we use placebos for control groups.
ethanwillis
Can you explain the reason?
lesuorac
Uh, there's no requirement to use placebos or a control group.
For example, covid just uses a treatment group and considers the rest of the world as control.
Research paper: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/25/2937/2025/