Posted by Mike Doran on 4/29/2009, 6:10 am, in reply to "Strengthening MCS Bowing-Out thru Texas"

Couple things to note. First is that if you draw a straight line SW over the dense strike levels in the CONUS over the past 5 days it runs roughly to where the El Cajon dammed river deltas into the EPAC. This time of year the sub tropical jet eminates from there, and the electrics of this phenomenon is very interesting to me. Second is the ITCZ (inter tropical convergence zone) is not quite over the widest portion of Africa. Practically what that means is we still are not quite in the peak of lightning globally. Of course as the orbit of the earth, given its tilt, moves toward the summer and fall, even though the earth is moving farther away from the sun in its elliptical orbit, the northern hemisphere begins to get more inSOlation. Not only do the oceans warm and hence become more conductive, but the land where thunderstorms can form (90 % of all lightning occurs over land) is mostly in the northern hemisphere. Further, ozone is created from high freq solar radiation, and that begins to form in the northern hemisphere to a greater degree as we approach the summer, and this is also a conductive element and electrically interesting portion of the atmosphere. It looks like about two weeks or so before, given just last year, there starts to be a jump down in terms of statistical significance, the anomalies, should appear. In fact a half a SD is about where we were last year to this point and there is little reason IMHO, given what I know, why this tiny difference matters one bit at this point. This is the time of year to expect a big jump in electrics and seems like it is welcomed with a big time severe weather event. A met posted this a couple of weeks ago on a climate bb and I disagree completely with his forecast, but it is an honest linear progression--but the forcings involved are not linear to season as I have explained from an electrics standpoint. CO2 is a conductivity element change and currents are about to jump in the global electrical circuit and that means the electrical forcing of CO2 is felt seasonally, why the MSU data shows warming only in the northern hemisphere, Antarctcia isn't showing net warming but the Arctic ice sheet issue exists, etc. BTW it is true that the solar forcing is significant not just in terms of radiation but also in terms of electrics. But the timing of the minimum, as low as it has been, has been when peak lightning is low anyway. Come this summer it is unlikely to continue in this manner and as the solar cycle progresses it progresses just when global lightning peaks. The volcanic activity is oriented to the Arctic where there is little water for it to interact with to matter to electrics and the eruptions are not like Pinatubo or El Chichen by a long shot--super high and huge eruptions that occurred in the tropics where there was a lot of electrical displacement currents and moisture for the SOx to interact with. Anyway, I look for this discussion to follow this pattern year after year when in the wintertime the so called skeptics complain and in the late summer and fall the warmers will get up in arms but the honest problem isn't ocean currents flipping by AMO in the Arctic or even seasonal radiation--as that argument would apply but does not to Antarctica. The problem is the skeptics and the warmers are arguing about the wrong mechanism behind CO2 and fossil fuels and at the same time missing the electics conditions associated with the construction of dams around the world . . . where rivers are again associated with land and mostly in the northern hemisphere and practically affect WHEN (later in the season) that electrically significant flow changes occur. Climate change to me is about two main human activities, pumping CO2 outside of the active biosphere into it and building huge dams on our rivers.