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Earth's 'Electrical Heartbeat' Found to Affect Cloud Formation

Scientists at the UK's University of Reading have discovered that the height of clouds changes by up to 200 meters over the course of the day under the influence of a global 'electrical heartbeat' in the atmosphere. Scientists have been aware of the daily global ebb and flow of electric current through the atmosphere for 100 years, when it was shown to vary consistently throughout the day wherever on the planet it was measured. This regular variation, effectively a global electrical heartbeat, is known as the Carnegie curve. The electric current is caused by electrified storms across the world and previously, no connection had been made between this current and the formation of clouds. Meteorologists Giles Harrison and Maarten Ambaum discovered the link by analyzing cloud base measurements made during polar darkness when there are few other influences on cloud formation. "The realization the electrical heartbeat of the planet plays a role in the formation of layer clouds indicates that existing models for clouds and climate are still missing potentially important components," said Ambaum. "Understanding these missing elements is crucial to improve the accuracy of our weather forecasts and predicting changes to our climate."

Topics:
Data Acquisition Data Acquisition Lasers & Laser Systems Measuring Instruments Photonics Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:14 One of the remarkable things about the atmosphere is that there's a current flowing all the way from the top of the atmosphere to the ground. This is generated globally by thunderstorms and the current flows around the entire planet. Here at the University of Reading we have some sampling plates which allows us to measure it. From measurements made in the 1920s on a ship called the Carnegie it was found that this current varied over the day like this No matter where you were on the planet, there was a minimum at about 3am UT and a maximum at about 7pm UT

    00:00:49 If you think about about that happening every day this means there is a sort of heartbeat of atmospheric electricity which is running through every day as a result of the Carnegie curve. We're interested in whether this curve was actually present in clouds themselves, in other words, was there an effect of the current on the clouds through which they passed. To do that we need to go somewhere where there's very little in the

    00:01:14 way of other influences on the clouds. We went to the poles, because in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere measurements are routinely made of the bases of clouds using lasers. They fire the light into the sky and measure how long it takes for the light to come back and work out the height of the cloud. We took the hourly measurements of cloud base height for these two sites and compared them with the Carnegie curve and we found that there was a variation that was very similar.

    00:01:42 This illustrates for the first time that there are changes in the clouds which we can associate with the Carnegie curve variations and the electrical currents that are flowing.