Marine storms are very curious in some parts of the world. The storms that are situated directly on two of the world's busiest shipping lanes, they are notably more powerful than those areas of the ocean where ships do not travel.
This may or may not be a fluke. Therefore, researchers led by Katrina virts, a scientist specializing in atmospheric sciences at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama, and Joel Thornton, an expert in the same specialty at the University of Washington in Seattle, both institutions in the United States have studied why it occurs this.
Sea storms
In order to understand why there are stronger sea storms in the areas where ships transit and where they are not weaker, the Katrina team mapped the appearance of lightning across the planet.
Analyzing the distribution and presence of lightning around the world, it is found that they fall with almost twice as often directly above heavily trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than in sea areas adjacent to shipping lanes and having similar climates.
This difference in the presence of storms in one place and another cannot be explained by natural processes or a "simple coincidence", but it is concluded that the aerosol particles that are emitted by the chimneys of ships they are changing the process of cloud formation above the sea.
Change in cloud formation
Ship gas emissions into the atmosphere alter the formation of clouds above the sea. As a result, many more powerful storms occur where the busiest marine routes are found, since they are the areas where there are more aerosol emissions.
The researchers conclude that the particles ejected by ship's smokestacks make the droplets in the clouds smaller, raising them higher in the atmosphere. This creates more ice particles and leads to more electrical activity.