RECENT CHANGES IN THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY IN VASLUI
Journal Title: Present Environment and Sustainable Development - Year 2010, Vol 4, Issue 4
Abstract
A thunderstorm (also called an electrical storm) is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its attendant thunder, produced from a cumulonimbus cloud. Thunderstorms form when significant condensation (resulting in the production of a wide range of water droplets and ice crystals) occurs in an atmosphere that is unstable and supports deep, rapid upward motion. This appears in the presence of three conditions: sufficient moisture accumulated in the lower atmosphere, reflected by high temperatures; a significant fall in air temperature with increasing height (steep adiabatic lapse rate); and a force such as mechanical convergence along a cold front to focus the lift. The process to initiate vertical lifting can be caused by: (1) unequal warming of the surface of the Earth, (2) orographic lifting due to topographic obstruction of airflow, and (3) dynamic lifting created by the presence of a frontal zone. As an intricate part of the global climatic system, thunderstorms pattern and activity are highly susceptible to anthropogenic climate change, and recent observation concerning thunderstorms in Vaslui seems to support this connection. But even if this is only a temporary period of anomaly, a cyclic variation or the beginning of a trend prone to continue in the future, the period spanning more than 22 years analyzed in this paper (1985-2006), deserve some more in depth research, because of the significant and rapid developments in thunderstorm activity, and also considering the ackground: this interval contains the top 17 hottest years ever recorded in the instrumental meteorology era. In addition, the fact that the changes in thunderstorm activity can be clearly linked to the significant changes in the way precipitations fall in the warm season, opens a new way in which the ferocity and destructive force of recent extreme weather phenomena can be explained, and ultimately predicted .
Authors and Affiliations
Mihai Florin Necula
Keywords
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