North Pole Lightning Strikes

On August 10th, 2019, a Saturday evening, a large number of lighting strikes happened 300 miles away from the North Pole at 6 pm.

It was recorded as at least 48 strikes, It's rare to find lighting in the Polar Region. In fact, it's far from normal. Lighting happens all the time; but, certain regions have lighting far less than others, the Polar Region being one that rarely sees such activity

Lighting only occurs when the thunderclouds have small bits of ice jumping around and moving each other which causes a charge. The lighter positive charge happens at the top of the cloud and the heavier negative charge happens at the bottom of the cloud. These charges grow large enough to create giant sparks. Lightning only occurs when there are already thunderclouds. Thunderclouds come when there is enough moisture in the air that's atop warmer air. The North Pole and the whole Polar Region is in a higher latitude, the warmer or hotter air doesn't necessarily happen.

Although this took scientists by surprise when this was recorded, it's almost to be expected with the dramatic weather changes our Earth has been going through, especially our polar regions. In the whole Polar Region, glaciers and ice caps are melting. The ice is melting because it is warming much faster than it ever has. The ice caps have been melting faster in the past 20 years than they have in the past 10,000 years.

This is caused by Global Warming. This has been an issue since the 19th century because of greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses trap heat into the atmosphere by absorbing the heat, because there is much of this gas in the atmosphere the artic isn't able to push the heat to space.

A comprehensive satellite study confirms that the melting of the ice caps and glaciers is making the sea levels rise. The polar regions are important drivers of the world's climate. The Arctic acts as a refrigerator by cooling off the the Earth when pushing heat into space. Since it hasn't been able to do so because of global warming, trapping all the heat inside the atmosphere, it has been getting warmer.

The warmer it gets the more unusual weather will be happening, such as lightning strikes 300 miles away from the North Pole.