Global warming will cause more powerful thunderstorms
The future climate change scenarios are predominantly negative and scientists from all over the world seem to agree that the world is heading towards a major environmental disaster that will seriously affect our future wellbeing.
The scientists are constructing numerous climate models with the help of sophisticated computer programs in order to determine changing weather conditions that should help them predict our future climate. The latest of these studies comes from Tel Aviv University, Israel, where scientists have used computer climate models and studied real-life examples of climate change in order to determine the impact that changing weather will have on storms.
The scientists have concluded that climate change will likely have major impact on lightning activity, and have predicted that every one degree Celsius of global temperature increase will cause approximately a 10 percent increase in lightning activity.
The increased lightning will have particularly negative impact in areas that are increasingly becoming warmer and drier such as the Mediterranean and the Southern United States that will likely be experiencing very intense thunderstorms.
The researchers also fear that wildfires will become more frequent in these areas because dry environment could spread fires more widely and quickly, making them more devastating than ever before.
More wildfires would also contribute to increase in air pollution by releasing far more smoke into the air than before, adding to a variety of different environmental issues.
More intense rainstorms could also result in flash-flooding, leading to problems with water supply because of the lack of water being retained in groundwater and lakes.