April 25, 2025, 9:55 a.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes
Storm clouds often gather over ships, and this is not meant in a figurative sense. In fact, thunderstorms occur particularly frequently over busy shipping routes. There is a meteorological phenomenon behind this for which there is scientific evidence. Find out more about it at Sunnytrips.
The fact that thunderstorms occur more frequently over ships than over the rest of the ocean "is one of the clearest examples of how humans alter the intensity of storms on Earth through the emission of particles from combustion." That's how Professor Joel Thornton, chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, put it in a press release. Sunnytrips explains it in more detail.
Why thunderstorms over ships are particularly common
Ship emissions act as “condensation nuclei”
Is there reason for cruise passengers to worry?
Why thunderstorms over ships are particularly common
Thornton's statement is based on a 2017 study in which the scientist and his team investigated why lightning density in two particularly busy shipping routes - the northeast Indian Ocean and the South China Sea - is up to twice as high as in neighboring regions. The compared areas have the same climate, so the explanation for this strikingly unequal distribution had to be different. The researchers want to have found these in their work.
The study was based on data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), which records lightning strikes worldwide. The researchers analyzed a period of 12 years. The evaluation showed that around twice as many lightning strikes were recorded over the shipping routes mentioned as in adjacent sea areas with similar climatic conditions. This effect was particularly clear in the so-called convectively active season - i.e. in phases in which thunderstorms are particularly common due to convective currents. Natural environmental factors could not explain this striking accumulation. Instead, the data suggests that emissions emitted by ship engines, particularly aerosol particles, increase convection and therefore the formation of thunderstorms.
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Ship emissions act as “condensation nuclei”
It is explained a little easier to understand in the book “Traveling – 365 Questions and Answers around the Globe”. Accordingly, large container ships in particular emit many pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and soot. These fine particles serve as condensation nuclei for water droplets - they provide the water vapor contained in the air with a surface on which droplets can form. In areas with a particularly large number of these particles, such as over busy shipping routes, the structure of the clouds changes: more but smaller droplets are formed, which rise higher into the atmosphere due to updrafts. There they freeze, collide and become electrically charged. This charge is eventually discharged in the form of lightning.
The chapter also refers to a scientific study of two busy shipping routes: a first from Sri Lanka to Singapore - located in the northeast Indian Ocean - and a second from Singapore to Vietnam in the South China Sea. It is quite possible that the above-mentioned study from the University of Washington is meant. The fact that there are more frequent thunderstorms does not mean that there is more precipitation, the book says, “the weather data also shows that.”
Is there reason for cruise passengers to worry?
The increased frequency of thunderstorms over certain shipping routes is primarily due to emissions from cargo ships. Cruise ships are also large and emit emissions. However, they operate less regularly and to a lesser extent on fixed routes, but they do not contribute to the same extent to the formation of thunderstorms.
Nevertheless, one could of course ask whether the accumulation of thunderstorms poses a danger to ships. The answer to this is no – at least with regard to serious risks to life and limb. Container ships and other large ocean-going vessels are generally well grounded. If lightning strikes, the ship's hull acts like a Faraday cage, similar to a car or airplane. As a reminder, a Faraday cage is a completely enclosed structure made of electrically conductive material that keeps electric fields away from the interior. Lightning would be conducted via the metallic outer shell and safely discharged into the sea, so that people inside would be protected from the electrical discharge. Minor damage is still possible - for example to electronic systems for navigation or communication. And that would indeed not be a desirable case.
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