{"id":27849,"date":"2025-08-31T13:16:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=27849"},"modified":"2025-08-31T13:16:39","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T07:31:39","slug":"scientists-track-lightning-pollution-in-real-time-using-nasa-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/scientists-track-lightning-pollution-in-real-time-using-nasa-satellite\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists track lightning \u201cpollution\u201d in real time using NASA satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Picture this: you\u2019re stuck in traffic on a summer afternoon, checking the weather app on your phone as dark storm clouds roll in. You might think about power outages or possible flooding, but you probably don\u2019t think about how every lightning bolt that flashes across the sky also emits a gas, nitrogen oxide (NO), that is also emitted in the exhaust from your car\u2019s engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, that\u2019s exactly what occurs during a thunderstorm. For the first time, scientists from the University of Maryland were able to detect lightning and its impact on air quality using high-frequency satellite observations, gaining valuable insight into how storms produce both pollution and critical chemical species that help cleanse Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of a few days in late June 2025, UMD Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Research Professor\u00a0Kenneth Pickering<\/a>\u00a0and Associate Research Scientist\u00a0Dale Allen<\/a>\u00a0used data captured by\u00a0NASA\u2019s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO)<\/a>\u00a0instrument to carefully monitor thunderstorms as they evolved while moving across the eastern United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in 2023, TEMPO typically tracks air pollutants across North America every hour from its perch 22,000 miles above Earth, but Pickering and Allen\u2019s experiment allowed them to take rapid-fire measurements of the nitrogen dioxide associated with each storm at 10-minute intervals. With the instrument\u2019s advanced capabilities, they were finally able to study complex processes as they happened in the air rather than piecing together clues after the fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the first time this kind of research has been conducted at such a temporal frequency,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cThunderstorms evolve on a rapid basis. They often\u00a0build up, intensify, and die within an hour\u2019s time. These short interval observations give us better snapshots of what actually happens during a storm.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith this experiment, we\u2019re able to count the number of lightning flashes as they occur using data from NOAA\u2019s Geostationary Lightning Mapper satellite instruments, and in turn, get a more accurate idea of how much nitrogen dioxide each flash of lightning produces during a storm and how long it sticks around afterward,\u201d Allen added. \u201cThis information will help researchers improve existing climate models and enhance our understanding of how lightning can affect the air we breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capturing lightning in a model<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When lightning strikes, it produces extremely hot temperatures that break apart nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. This results in the creation of nitrogen oxides, the same type of air pollutants emitted by cars or other sources of fuel combustion, which contribute to ozone pollution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLightning globally makes up 10 to 15 percent of total nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cHuman pollution is much greater, but what\u2019s important to consider is that lightning releases nitrogen oxides at much higher altitudes, where it can be more efficient at catalyzing the production of ozone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While car exhaust pollutes the air near the ground, lightning pollution occurs high up in the atmosphere, where the resulting ozone is most effective for atmospheric warming.Lightning pollution and resulting ozone can sometimes be transported down to the surface, affecting air quality hundreds of miles away from the original storm. Allen noted that this effect is exacerbated in the summer, as temperatures climb higher and ozone production rates are greater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLightning\u2019s effects on climate during the summer season are comparable to anthropogenically created nitrogen oxides, which is why we wanted to study storms during June,\u201d Allen explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But lightning doesn\u2019t just create pollution\u2014it also triggers the formation of hydroxyl radicals, important molecules that help cleanse Earth\u2019s atmosphere by breaking down gases like methane, an important contributor to global warming and background levels of ozone. The lightning experiment provided the researchers with critical insight into this lightning-caused chain reaction, connecting the production of nitrogen oxides to hydroxyl radicals, which helped them map out the atmospheric composition and the complex molecular dynamics at play during lightning storms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom past studies by our group and others, we believe that each flash of lightning creates about 250 moles of nitrogen oxides in the sky on average,\u201d Allen said. However, that value is uncertain, and the production by individual flashes varies by at least an order of magnitude.\u00a0\u201cWe believe\u00a0that when storms get more intense, lightning flashes get shorter and produce less nitrogen oxide per flash. This study will give us a chance to prove that. Understanding how the footprint of lightning will change in a world of intensifying weather extremes is essential to formulate\u00a0climate models for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decoding weather extremes and improving air quality forecasting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickering and Allen believe their TEMPO experiment has potential real-world impacts on daily life. Gases produced by lightning can travel on long \u201cconveyor belts of moving air\u201d and influence air quality far from where storms originally occurred, Allen noted. Occasionally, lightning also contributes to ground-level ozone, a primary component of smog that can trigger asthma and other respiratory issues in humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor people living in mountainous areas like Colorado, this information can be very important, as lightning does make a significant contribution to surface ozone at higher terrain altitudes,\u201d Pickering said. \u201cIt could make a difference in how meteorologists predict air quality during and after storms in such regions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Pickering and Allen are still analyzing their early readings from TEMPO, they believe their experiment will help scientists evaluate how much of the polluting gases in Earth\u2019s atmosphere can be attributed to human activities versus natural processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, atmospheric scientists are uncertain about the amount of pollution each lightning flash generates, but the TEMPO experiment provides the raw data that lays the foundation for understanding how varying degrees of lightning intensity can impact local and global air quality. The experiment also provides insight into the atmosphere\u2019s ability to naturally break down pollutants, such as methane and other harmful hydrocarbons.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to use this high-frequency data to narrow the major uncertainties in our current climate models,\u201d Allen said. \u201cWith better data comes better predictions and potentially better ways to protect our health and environment from both natural and human-made pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture this: you\u2019re stuck in traffic on a summer afternoon, checking the weather app on your phone as dark storm clouds roll in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-200x200.webp",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-675x510.webp",675,510,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm.webp",700,529,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-600x529.webp",600,529,true],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-600x529.webp",600,529,true],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-700x490.webp",700,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-550x360.webp",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-95x65.webp",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-640x529.webp",640,529,true],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-96x96.webp",96,96,true],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Storm-150x113.webp",150,113,true]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Environment<\/a>","tag_info":"Environment","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27851,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27849\/revisions\/27851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}