lightnings 01 - it is inside

That are the Lightnings.

Lightnings are electric discharges of high intensity that happen in the atmosphere. Most of them happens inside of the clouds and you is just seen by us as sparkles. However, a part of them leaves the clouds and goes for the soil, hiting it. These discharges are named lightnings.

The lightnings are whaat worry the men so much, due to its power to cause a lot of times damages and deaths.

What are the principal damages cause by the lightnings?

Brazil is reached every year for about 100 million lightnings. In our country the lightnings possess a medium intensity of 40.000 Ampéres, it means, about 10.000 times more than the intensity of the current that circulates in the electric apparels in our residence. Due to this, the lightnings when reach an object usually cause great damages. Examples of that are electronic apparels burst, as computers, or even the electric power interruption.

Although itr is difficult to determine the total damages caused by the lightnings to society, it is believed that, only in the state of São Paulo they are of the order of hundreds of million of reais every year. The lightnings can also reach the people, causing serious wounds or even the death.

In Brazil about 200 people die a year reached by lightnings.

What is the use of Lightning rod?

The lightning rods are metallic stems linked by conductive cables to the soil, placed in the roofs of residences to create a path through where the ray can pass in its way for the soil without causing damages.

In the soil he vanishes. Although the lightning rods don't totally protect a residence, its use in the last two centuries has been reducing a lot the accidents provoked by lightnings.

Lightning rod is also used in ships, television towers and radio and transmission towers and electric power distribution.

How to protect from the lightnings?

The lightnings are dangerous. Therefore it is important to avoid some risk situations. In general, the lightnings reach only one point in the soil, but they sometimes ramify and they can reach several places.

When somebody is reached directly by a ray, he/she can suffer a heart and breathling failure . Even in those cases, the person has survival chances. For so much, he/she should receive immediate attendance, with CPR. Data obtained in the United States shows that one among 50 individuals that suffers from heart and breathing failure cased by lightnings has survived.

The people can also be reached through electric currents that spread into the soil starting from the point that the ray reached. One in each six people reached directly by a ray dies. Among the one that get survive, many present, for the rest of their lives, problems of health in general.

Due to that reality, it is very important to know how to protect yourself. But how can that be made? The lightnings fall in the highest points of a certain place. That´s the reason of being important to avoid holding objects as sticks and raising pipes, not stay stand up in decamped and plane places, and not stay at high places, as, for instance, the top of the mountains.

To take precautions of the action of the lightnings through the electric currents that circulate into the soil, should be avoided being inside of water and also near by trees. Other risks are the smaller discharges formed starting from the ray. To guarantee the safety, should not be near by fences or near by the stop-ray connection cables with the soil.

But which is the correct action before a sudden storm? The ideal is to be at home. When that is not possible, to seek a shelter or to try to stay in the car. However, if the place be decamped, the correct is to be stooping, preferably putting on boots with rubber sole.

 

Brazil and USA study lightnings and El Niño.

News (Correio Braziliense-DF)

Inpe, Nasa and universities join to unmask connections between the number of lightnings and abrupt climatic changes in America.

São José dos Campos (SP) An unpublished partnership between Brazil and the United States will take cientists of the two countries study the influences of the phenomena El Niño and global heating in the density of lightnings that falls on the American continent. This is the first time the scientific community unites efforts to unmask which the relationships between the storms and those climatic changes.

The united activities will involve the National Institute of Space Researches (Inpe), the National Administration of Aeronautics and Space (Nasa) and the universities of Washington and of Texas. The director of the Institute of Cooperation and Applied Meteorology of the North University–American of Texas, Richard Orville, considers that type of essential study to obtain a better analysis of the action of these phenomena in the alteration of the climate of the earth.

Initial evaluations showed that a small increase in the temperature generates a great increment of lightnings. " If this confirms, the lightnings will be a fundamental tool in the studies of the El Niño effects and of the global heating", commented.

The United States maintain in operation the largest net of detection of lightnings in America, but needed data of South America to perfect its researches. The agreement can reinforce some surprising conclusions. One of them comes from Texas University. Orville, considered one of the largest world authorities in atmospheric science, says that he has verified the growth in the number of lightnings in his country in the last years.

Consent

In spite of the several studies done on the interference of the heating of the planet and of Ocean Pacific's waters in the coast of Peru, only two years ago there was a consent in the scientific community on the influence of the El Niño in the increase of the electric discharges. Even so, divergence points still exist among the specialists of the subject.

The urgency in the mobilization of the scientific institutes is due, also, bit by bit conclusive data on that interferences. The United States should only now calculate the increase of lightnings in the presence of these anomalies that unbalence the climate of the planet. The researches in this section are late in order to the other climatic subjects. The information on the effects of the global heating in the electric discharges, for instance, are insufficient for any conclusion.

The hope in moving forward in this subject is in the improvement of the detection equipments and tracking of the lightnings. Brazil begins now to form its monitorasing net, in an initiative of the headquarters Energeticses of Minas Gerais (Cemig) and of Inpe. But the covering should be restricted to the Southwest of the country and a small part of the South.

Discharges

The co-ordinator of the researches of Inpe referred to atmospheric discharges, Osmar Pinto Júnior, presented this week, in the 5th International Congress of the Brazilian Society of Geophysics, accomplished in São Paulo, an alarming data. In the Southwest of Brazil, in April of 1992, when the El Niño was in activity, 200 thousand lightnings were registered. However, two years later, already without the presence of the phenomenon, that number fell for 50 thousand. "We have real need to know which are the connections among those two subjects ", he commented.

About 35 million lightnings fall per year In the United States territory. In Brazil that index can be three times bigger, edging 100 million.

The difference is still more accentuated if compared the volume of positive lightnings–rarer and dangerous. About 9% of the American discharges are of this popularity, while in Brazil that percentile one arises for 29%.

The lightnings of the amazon storms will also be white of studies involving Brazil and United States. Two great campaigns of collection of data in the area are programmed for the summer of 1999. Inpe, the University of São Paulo and Nasa will install a system of lightnings tracking in Rondônia. The equipment, with four sensor of soil reading, will be making registrations for three years.