50 years ago, the sun’s influence on Earth’s lightning was revealed

Cover of Science News' June 22, 1974 issue

Lightning and the sun — Science News, June 22, 1974

The latest addition to the growing list of meteorological phenomena which have been linked with solar activity is lightning…. Using data from 1930 to 1973, [a researcher] reports in the May 24 Nature that “in spite of year-to-year variations in the incidence of lightning, there is an underlying cyclic variation with a period of about 11 years which is in phase with the solar cycle.”

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Update

Multiple studies have linked upticks in lightning frequency with periodic fluctuations in the sun’s magnetic field. The connection isn’t limited to these 11-year solar cycles. In 2018, scientists confirmed a trend related to one of the sun’s shorter cycles — the 27 days our star takes to rotate around its axis. But how exactly the sun’s activity influences lightning is an enduring mystery. Perhaps the solar wind gives lightning a boost. When this stream of charged particles enters our atmosphere at high speeds, the average number of lightning strikes increases by over 30 percent for more than a month afterward, a 2014 study found.