Unusually high activity on the sun increases the chances of lightning strikes on Earth, according to a new study.
When high-speed solar particles stream into our atmosphere, more lightning bolts tend to follow, BBC News reported. Scientists are working to predict when the dangerous storms will hit by monitoring solar activity with satellites.
"There's something like 24,000 people struck by lightning each year, so having any understanding or advanced warning of the severity of lightning storms has to be useful," said lead researcher Chris Scott, as quoted by BBC News.
Publishing their findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the researchers found that solar winds in our atmosphere can not only trigger the famous Northern Lights, but also affect our everyday weather.
During its rotations, the sun sends out particles at speeds of 900,000 to 1.8 million miles per hour; the increased volatility in weather lasted for more than a month after the particles ended Earth's atmosphere, the researchers wrote.
"The solar wind is not continuous; it has slow and fast streams. Because the sun rotates, these streams can be sent out behind each other--so if you have a fast solar wind catching up with a slow solar wind, it causes a concentration to occur," said Scott, as quoted by BBC News.
Scientists still aren't sure why solar particles tend to trigger more lightning, but they believe sun activity may be breaking into storm clouds to release more bolts of electric energy. Next, researchers will have to pinpoint where the particles go once they enter Earth's atmosphere.
"What we need to do now is to track these energetic particles down through the atmosphere, to see if we can see where they end up," said Scott.
"We know these particles aren't energetic enough to reach the ground, so they must be stopped somewhere in the lower atmosphere, and we need to know where this is."
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