Extreme Weather in Brazil

Brazil


 Today we are changing paths a bit and talking about Brazil!

Brazil is the largest country in South America, with a population of about 216 million people. According to news source Brazilian Report, Brazil is "the lightning capitol of the world". There is an average of 77.8 million lightning strikes in Brazil per year. 

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

NASA's Earth Observatory describes the reason why so many thunderstorms occur in Brazil. The excessive warm temperatures and moist air lower in the atmosphere energize the storm as the warm air rises. We discussed in this weeks chapter that more severe thunderstorms occur when there is a high amount of water vapor and updraft of air. This is a normal phenomenon in Brazil.




The image above comes from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). It represents a spacial distribution of annual water vapor flows in mm/yr due to vegetation before human impacts. We can see that a majority of Brazil accounts for a significant amount of the higher levels of water vapor. 






On March 28th of this year, New York Times article "One of the Luckiest Lighting Strikes Ever Recorded" was published and talks about extremely rare footage of the use of lightning rods on buildings. Lightning rods, typically made of copper or aluminum are set on top of buildings and will send a positive discharge that will connect to the negative discharge that comes from the lightning. The lighting will travel through the rod and safely into the ground via wires. This reduces the threat of high voltages and currents in buildings. 

Severe thunderstorms, like the ones in Brazil, can have serious damaging effects. Some other hazards that  occur due to thunderstorms are flash flooding, landslides, strong winds, hail, etc. leading to property damage and even death. There is significant research that suggests that severe storms will only grow worse in time if we do not take action soon.















Sources:
https://brazilian.report/environment/2020/01/27/brazil-lightning-capital-world/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/science/lightning-rod-video.html
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/2443/thunderstorms-over-brazil

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