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Author Topic: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?  (Read 3675 times)

MrVisible

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I've been seeing stories about the episode of thunderstorm asthma that took place in Melbourne on the 21st. All the articles I've seen attribute the cause to pollen, even though from some of the early stories, a lot of the people affected didn't have hay fever.

This paper found that pollen and fungal spores didn't seem to affect people during thunderstorms, while ozone did.

Thunderstorms bring ozone down to ground level, and the symptoms people describe certainly seem to correlate with ozone exposure.

This has only been happening since 1983, so it seems odd to me that pollen would only recently develop this peculiar capacity to explode during thundertorms.

I was hoping that the weather enthusiasts would care to discuss whether it would be possible for a thunderstorm to increase ozone at ground level to lethal concentrations for at-risk individuals.

*Edited to fix links.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2016, 11:35:04 PM by MrVisible »

SteveMDFP

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Re: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2016, 11:34:54 PM »
I've been seeing stories about the episode of thunderstorm asthma that took place in Melbourne on the 21st. All the articles I've seen attribute the cause to pollen, even though from some of the early stories, a lot of the people affected didn't have hay fever.

This paper found that pollen and fungal spores didn't seem to affect people during thunderstorms, while ozone did.

Thunderstorms bring ozone down to ground level, and the symptoms people describe certainly seem to correlate with ozone exposure.

This has only been happening since 1983, so it seems odd to me that pollen would only recently develop this peculiar capacity to explode during thundertorms.

I was hoping that the weather enthusiasts would care to discuss whether it would be possible for a thunderstorm to increase ozone at ground level to lethal concentrations for at-risk individuals.

I've read just a bit about this, and I know a bit about asthma.  I suspect that the ozone increase might be a necessary but perhaps insufficient cause for the respiratory distress and asthma attacks.  Certainly ozone is a respiratory irritant, but I'm skeptical that lightning-created ozone by itself. would be sufficient for this magnitude of reaction.  But add in pollen kicked up by wind, with mold and fungal spores and who knows what other irritants might become airborne.  I think it's possible that climate change might alter local amounts of various pollens and other particulates to make these reactions more possible. 

The only definite thing in my mind, though, is that more study is needed.

MrVisible

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Re: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2016, 02:45:01 AM »
It's not just lightning causing the ozone. From this article:

Quote
Pan, who works on atmospheric chemistry at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found that as thunderheads rise to heights up to 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, they cause ripples in the boundary between the troposphere—the lowest layer of the atmosphere—and the stratosphere—the next layer above it. Those ripples can actually tear a gap in the boundary layer on the front of the storm, allowing ozone-rich stratospheric air to pour down to the troposphere.

It just strikes me that something changed as of 1983, and a change in the pollen doesn't seem likely. At least, not a mutation that spread world-wide within a few years. And we know that the atmosphere has been changing a lot in recent years, and we've been getting more frequent and more severe storms.

John Batteen

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Re: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2016, 06:22:41 AM »
Carbon fertilization of the atmosphere is causing increased pollen production.  It's affected my allergies greatly in the US.

Gray-Wolf

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Re: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2016, 02:57:06 PM »
I think the increases in the humann resonance frequency of the planet , over recent years, would indicate that we are in a period of increasing lightning?

The height of storms is also increasing often bursting into the strat and placing more moisture there?

The weird QBO event in Feb has yet to be explained but maybe this increase in impacts from below could be part to blame?
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MrVisible

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Re: Could thunderstorms cause a life-threatening concentration of ozone?
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2016, 11:20:42 PM »
Another incident of thunderstorm asthma, this time in Kuwait.

Isn't it winter in Kuwait, and summer in southern Australia?