What Role Does Lightning Play In The Nitrogen Cycle – Nitrogen fixation includes a number of natural and artificial processes that convert nitrogen into a form usable by organisms.

Nitrogen is an essential component of amino acids, proteins and DNA, making it fundamental to life. However, despite making up approximately 78% of Earth’s atmosphere, atmospheric nitrogen (N:

What Role Does Lightning Play In The Nitrogen Cycle

) is not directly usable by most living organisms. This is where the crucial process of nitrogen fixation comes into play.

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Nitrogen fixation converts or “fixes” nitrogen into a form that organisms can use. It is the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen (N:

Although nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere, its triple bond makes it chemically stable and difficult for most organisms to use. Only specific bacteria and specific processes break this bond and “fix” nitrogen into a biologically usable form.

Thus, the primary importance of nitrogen fixation is that it converts nitrogen into a form for use by humans, other animals, plants, and other organisms. Nitrogen is necessary in proteins, nucleic acids and other molecules.

The nitrogen cycle is a series of processes that transform nitrogen into different forms through the environment. Nitrogen fixation plays a key role in the cycle.

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Bacteria (cyanobacteria or blue-green algae, green sulfur bacteria, purple sulfur bacteria, and anaerobic or methanogenic bacteria) and archaea accomplish most of the biological nitrogen fixation. Bacteria are either free-living in the soil or in a symbiotic relationship with plants or lichens.

Most plants do not fix nitrogen. Some of them use all the nitrogen produced by the bacteria. Others leach additional fixed nitrogen into the soil. Nitrogen also enters the soil when plants die. Animals get their nitrogen from plants (indirectly if they eat other animals).

During a thunderstorm, the energy from lightning breaks apart nitrogen molecules, allowing the atoms to combine with oxygen to form nitrates. Ozone, which is also formed as a result of lightning, facilitates these reactions. Rain carries nitrates to the ground where they are absorbed by plants. MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – With warmer weather, it’s time to get those plants and flowers in the ground, and the chance of thunderstorms can provide a botanical boost. more than one way.

Of course, rain is a key ingredient for plants and flowers, but lightning, while extremely dangerous (obviously), can also help your lawn stay healthy.

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Although lightning is often associated with extreme weather, have you ever noticed that your lawn and garden become greener and lusher in the weeks following a thunderstorm?

Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. In fact, the air we breathe is about 78% nitrogen (and only about 21% oxygen).

A nitrogen molecule in air consists of two atoms that hold each other very tightly. In order for plants to absorb nitrogen, the two atoms must be separated. But it takes a huge burst of energy to break apart those nitrogen molecules and turn them into a compound that plants can use.

When lightning explodes in the atmosphere, it splits apart nitrogen molecules. This allows them to combine with oxygen in the air to form nitrogen oxides. Rain dissolves them into nitrates and then carries them to Earth and soil. Nitrates are considered a “super fertilizer”. So, apart from providing a spectacular light show, lightning also helps to fertilize the soil and plants turn green faster.

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Now, a thunderstorm or two in the summer doesn’t make much of a difference, but when they happen every day for weeks, it’s especially beneficial for agriculture in prime areas. Healthy soil is the key to good crop yields, and nitrogen is key to healthy soil.

A former Covington teacher accused of molesting the victim’s pregnant child, according to court records, nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor molecules break down from lightning and the associated weaker electrical discharges, producing reactive gases NO, O.

Lightning breaks apart nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere and creates reactive chemicals that affect greenhouse gases. Now a team of atmospheric chemists and lightning scientists has found that lightning and, surprisingly, subvisible emissions that cannot be seen with cameras or the naked eye, produce the hydroxyl radical, OH, and the hydroperoxyl radical, HO.

The hydroxyl radical is important in the atmosphere because it initiates chemical reactions and breaks down molecules such as the greenhouse gas methane. OH is a major driver of many compositional changes in the atmosphere.

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Detected signals in the clouds and asked what was wrong with our instrument,” said Penn State Distinguished Professor of Meteorology William H. Brun. put them on the shelves for further study.”

The data came from an instrument on an airplane flying over Colorado and Oklahoma in 2012 that watched the chemical changes in the atmosphere of thunder and lightning.

But a few years ago, Bruin took the data off the shelf, saw that the signals were indeed hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl, and then worked with a graduate student and a research assistant to see if the signals could be caused by sparks and invisible emissions in the lab. . They then performed a reanalysis of the thunder and lightning database.

“With the help of an excellent undergraduate intern,” Bruen says, “we were able to link the massive signals from our instrument flying through thunderclouds with measurements of lightning from the ground.”

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The researchers report their findings online today (April 29) in Science First Release and in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres.

Airplanes avoid flying through the rapidly growing cores of thunderstorms because it’s dangerous, but can sample the anvil, the top part of the cloud that extends outward in the direction of the wind, Bruen says. Visible lightning occurs in the region of the anvil near the core of the thunderstorm.

“Throughout history, people have only been interested in lightning because of what it can do to the ground,” Bruen says. “There is now growing interest in the weaker electrical discharges in thunderstorms that lead to lightning.”

Most lightning never strikes the ground, and lightning that remains in clouds is particularly important in affecting ozone and important greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere. It was known that lightning can split water to form hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl, but this process has never been observed in a thunderstorm.

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What initially puzzled Brune’s team was that their instrument recorded high levels of hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl in parts of the cloud where no lightning was visible from the aircraft or the ground. Laboratory experiments have shown that a weak electric current, much less energetic than visible lightning, can produce these same components.

While the researchers found hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl in areas where lightning was visible, they found little evidence of ozone and no evidence of nitrogen oxide, which is required to form visible lightning. If subvisible lightning is a common occurrence, the hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl produced by these electrical events must be included in atmospheric models. Currently they are not.

According to the researchers, “Lightning-generated OH (hydroxyl) from all storms occurring globally may be responsible for a highly uncertain but significant 2% to 16% of global atmospheric OH oxidation.

“These results are highly uncertain, in part because we don’t know how these measurements apply to the rest of the world,” Bruen said. “We only flew over Colorado and Oklahoma. Most thunderstorms are in the tropics. The overall structure of high plains storms is different from tropical storms. Clearly, we need more aircraft measurements to reduce this uncertainty.”

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More info: W.H. Brune el al., “Amounts of extreme oxidants produced by lightning in storm clouds,” Science (2021). Science.sciencemag.org/lookup/ … 1126/science.abg0492

Quote: Lightning and subvisible discharges produce molecules that clean the atmosphere (2021, April 29), retrieved October 5, 2023 from https:///news/2021-04-lightning-subvisible-discharges-molecules-atmosphere.html

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