When the Scientists from Texas University claimed that their findings from a study, published in Nature Geosciences, could help predict storms and understand Climate dynamics, it was duly welcomed by the Scientific community worldwide.
They looked for 50,000 years old oxygen isotopes in Texas caves to study the relation between past thunderstorms and their respective duration.
Much to their expectations, they found that storms coincided from being less intense to more, with the rapid global climate shifts at the time, which in turn depends on wind and moisture patterns.
A similar pattern was also observed between recent thunderstorms in the US (where the study was undertaken) and climate change, as the storms prosper and intensify in terms of frequency.
If we are able to corelate between past thunderstorms, their duration and the secrets of climate change, we will surely be able to predict the upcoming ones in future, saving lives and livelihoods.
The author of the study explains: “If we can run a climate model for the past which is consistent with cave records, and run that same model moving forward, we can trust its findings more if it matched the cave records versus if they didn’t.”
“Out of two models, if one really matches the cave isotopes then you can trust that one in understanding storm distribution in the future.”
However, this study has been put to further use by NASA when it is trying to investigate the impacts of such weather conditions in the upper layers of the atmosphere, encircling the Earth.
The prime focus is on the stratosphere, the second layer from the Earth that is responsible for Ozone. This is especially crucial to understand as climate change leads to severe and more frequent thunderstorms.
What exactly is the problem with severe storms and Stratosphere?
A participant involved in the investigation clarifies: “Most thunderstorms occur in the lower layer of the atmosphere, which we call the troposphere.”
“But when we get particularly intense thunderstorms, the updrafts — the rising air in the storm — can actually overshoot into the layer above, which is the stratosphere.”
Stratosphere is an upper atmospheric layer extending from about 10-50 kms at midlatitudes.
This may cause the air at the tropospheric level to rise up into the stratosphere for 20-30 minutes but even in such a brief visit, can carry pollutants and water those may not otherwise reach at such a level in such a short quantum of time.
This may have ‘a significant impact’ on radiative and chemical processes involved in the atmosphere as these updrafts may alter the chemical composition of Stratosphere altogether. This can have a large impact on climate itself.
Any irreparable damage to the layer may hinder the creation of Ozone or probably negate it, Stratosphere composes of about 90% of the world’s Ozone layer and is important to sustain it.
Ozone is responsible for guarding us against harmful ultraviolet radiations coming in from the Sun, responsible for skin and eye cancer, cataracts and even feeble immune system.
That is, Ozone and therefore Stratosphere is crucial for human survival on Earth. Hence NASA brought alive a project called “Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS)” research project to investigate and analyze our Earth better, in all perspectives.
Using the derived information, NASA (collaborating with NOAA and several other prestigious universities) will aim to understand the composition and size of particles which get to make their way up to the stratosphere and the way they might influence Earth’s climate as such.
Side-by-side, the scientists may attempt to understand the process of cloud formation and subsequent precipitation in a region.
“What we don’t so often think about is that the atmosphere also contains a lot of particulate matter, and this was reinforced for us all over the last few weeks, when we learned about the wildfires burning in the Pacific Northwest, both in the U.S and Canada”.
“That had a huge impact, especially on things like air quality and human health. … Particulate matter, particularly in high concentrations, can cause a lot of premature deaths around the world.”
There seems to be an inadvertent relationship between the climate change and particulate matter release in air and that has become crucial for understanding anything in tandem.
NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft will be deployed for such investigation which composes of fully robotic, pre-programmed instruments inside to efficiently measure the gases and particles coming out of thunderstorm tops, as well as added information, such as water vapor.
It is manually operated aircraft wherein the pilot shall wear a pressurized suit to endure the high altitudes, upto 70,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, that’s nearly twice the altitude touched by commercial airlines on the planet.
NASA with insights from different Scientists, has begun looking beyond the Earth, into the atmospheric layers for pollutants and the ways this can hurt us humans and usher in a new possible chaos.
For we have understood now that we need to detect and curb the environmental problems created by us, in time when we can act on them.