Emerging investigator series: spatially and temporally resolved lightning NOx production rates obtained with space-based lightning detectors

Description

Rebekah P Horner, Eloise A Marais, and Lee T Murray calculate how much nitrogen oxide pollution each lightning flash produces, using flash energy measured by satellite sensors. Lightning is a major natural source of these gases high in the atmosphere, where they steer ozone and other climate-relevant chemistry. Earlier models used one fixed value per flash everywhere. The trio instead let production vary by place and hour over the years 2015 to 2019.

Ocean flashes proved more productive than land flashes, a pattern the fixed models missed, though land still emitted more overall because flashes are more frequent there. The global total fell by nearly two units of nitrogen against the old inventory. Feeding the new rates into a chemistry model lowered several key gases and eased known model overestimates. The authors call for independent checks of the rates, since much rides on them for methane and ozone accounting.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13647042