Latest Colin Price Stories

Number of flash floods and forest fires could increase with temperature, says TAU researcher Researchers are working to identify exactly how a changing climate will impact specific elements of weather, such as clouds, rainfall, and lightning. A Tel Aviv University researcher has predicted that for every one degree Celsius of warming, there will be approximately a 10 percent increase in lightning activity. This could have negative consequences in the form of flash floods, wild fires, or...

Scientists have calculated that the Earth sees about 760 thunderstorms every hour. The figure is substantially lower than numbers that have been used for nearly a century. The new research, which was unveiled at a recent European Geosciences Union meeting, uses a global network of monitoring stations that detect the electromagnetic pulses produced by major bolts of lightning. The scientists confirmed that thunderstorms are mainly a tropical phenomenon, and the Congo basin is the global...

Native Americans used smoke signals to indicate danger, and a white plume is sent up by the Vatican when a new Pope is chosen. Now, a new research project by Tel Aviv University researchers and their colleagues shows that where there's "smoke" there may be significant consequences for local weather patterns, rainfall and thunderstorms.In a new study, Prof. Colin Price, head of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, researched data on lightning patterns...

TAU discovers an accurate tool for tracking solar rotationSunspots, which rotate around the sun's surface, tell us a great deal about our own planet. Scientists rely on them, for instance, to measure the sun's rotation or to prepare long-range forecasts of the Earth's health.But there are some years, like this one, where it's not possible to see sunspots clearly. When we're at this "solar minimum," very few, if any, sunspots are visible from Earth. That poses a problem for...

In legend, sprites are trolls, elves and other spirits that dance high above our ozone layer. But scientists at Tel Aviv University have discovered that some very real "sprites" are zipping across the atmosphere as well, providing a possible explanation for those other legendary denizens of the skies, UFOs.Thunderstorms, says Prof. Colin Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University, are the catalyst for a newly discovered natural phenomenon...

Flash floods are the most common natural disaster in the United States, and because of their unpredictability they're the leading weather-related cause of death for Americans. They usually arrive with little or no warning, but a Tel Aviv University researcher is trying to predict where and when they will occur "• using lightning.Prof. Colin Price, coordinator of the international "Flash Project" and head of the Geophysics and Planetary Physics Department at Tel Aviv University, is studying...