Lightning declines over shipping lanes following regulation of fuel sulfur emissions

Wright, Chris J.; Thornton, Joel A.; Jaeglé, Lyatt; Cao, Yang; Zhu, Yannian; Liu, Jihu; Jones II, Randall; Holzworth, Robert; Rosenfeld, Daniel; Wood, Robert; Blossey, Peter; Kim, Daehyun

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-2937-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-2937-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-2937-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

ACP Letters

| Highlight paper

|

11 Mar 2025

ACP Letters | Highlight paper |

| 11 Mar 2025

Lightning declines over shipping lanes following regulation of fuel sulfur emissions

Chris J. Wright, Joel A. Thornton, Lyatt Jaeglé, Yang Cao, Yannian Zhu, Jihu Liu, Randall Jones II, Robert Holzworth, Daniel Rosenfeld, Robert Wood, Peter Blossey, and Daehyun Kim

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-2937-2025-supplement

Data sets

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

MERRA-2 tavg1_2d_aer_Nx: 2d,1-Hourly,Time-averaged,Single-Level,Assimilation,Aerosol Diagnostics V5.12.4 Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://doi.org/10.5067/KLICLTZ8EM9D

GPM IMERG Final Precipitation L3 Half Hourly 0.1 degree x 0.1 degree V07 G. J. Huffman et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/GPM/IMERG/3B-HH/07

Download Climate Timeseries: ONI NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory https://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/oni.data

MODIS Atmosphere L2 Cloud Product (06_L2) S. Platnick https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD06_L2.061

Cloud and Precipitation Feature Database from Nine Years of TRMM Observations (https://atmos.tamucc.edu/trmm/data/) C. Liu et al. https://doi.org/10.1175/2008JAMC1890.1

Growing Detection Efficiency of the World Wide Lightning Location Network (https://www.wwlln.net) C. J. Rodger et al. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3137706

Model code and software

Lightning Declines Over Shipping Lanes Follow Regulation of Fuel Sulfur: Data Analysis C. Wright https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11373991

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Executive editor

Our understanding of the impact of aerosol particles on deep-convective clouds is still incomplete. Earlier research found increased lightning above shipping lanes and hypothesized that the ship emissions support the development of deep-convective cloud systems. The present study investigates the effect of a sevenfold reduction in sulphur content of shipping fuel, implemented following the International Marine Organisation 2020 regulation. A significant decrease in lightning activity is found over shipping lanes in combination with a reduction of both the concentration and the size of the emitted particles, providing further evidence of a strong connection between shipping missions, deep-convective cloud development, and lightning activity. This highlights the need to resolve the still unclear acting mechanisms.