IPS-English VENEZUELA: Lightning in the Sky Fed by Underground Methane
 
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:16:21 -0800


 
Humberto Márquez* - IPS/IFEJ

CONGO MIRADOR, Venezuela, Nov 17  (IPS)  - A red, yellow and orange
flash illuminates a slice of the sky and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela.
For a fraction of a second after, lightning of incandescent white
move left to right and right to left between small clouds like dark
silhouettes.

Seconds later the phenomenon repeats, with different tones and intensity
and new shapes of neighbouring clouds, lasting for hours, with a distant
and muted rumour of thunder, until the charged convective clouds cease
their pyrotechnic game and turn into a regular storm. It rains --
a deluge that lasts six hours.

The lightning of the Catatumbo -- over the delta of the river of
the same name, which begins in north-eastern Colombia and flows among
marshes and lagoons into Lake Maracaibo, in western Venezuela -- is
a cloud-to-cloud electrical storm, linked to a permanent low pressure
in the area, rich in methane that is set alight and glows.

”This is the place in the world with highest average time with electrical
storms per year,” says Venezuelan environmentalist Eric Quiroga, promoter
of Sep. 16 as International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer.

The Catatumbo has lightning 140 to 160 nights per year, lasting about
seven hours, in two cycles just before and after midnight, for about
980 hours annually, with an average of 28 strikes per minute, for
a grand total of 1,646,000 per year, according to Quiroga.

The sites with greatest occurrence of electrical storms in the world
are El Bagre, in Antioquia, Colombia (270 days per year); Tororo,
Uganda (251 days), and Bogor, in Java, Indonesia (223 days). In Tororo
and El Bagre, the lightning lasts about two hours, usually occurs
during the day, and between clouds and land.

The cloud-land electrical charges have an intensity of 10,000 to
50,000 amperes, while cloud-cloud charges are between 100,000 and
300,000 amperes. ”Each bolt could light all the bulbs of South America.
An average of 1.6 million strikes per year and an average intensity
of 150,000 amperes make the Catatumbo the leading source in its type
of electrical generator on the planet,” Quiroga said in an interview
for this report.

It is the glow that one sees as night falls, watching from the fishing
boats, from Puerto Concha to Ologá and Congo Mirador, villages built
on stilts on the south side of the lake, which at moments becomes
a mirror of light.

Where does the methane come from that feeds the flashes? For years,
the predominant thesis was that it emanated from decomposing organic
material nourished by the torrential rains in the southern lake watershed,
some 600 km southwest of Caracas, where winds from the northeast and
southwest collide.

But researcher Angel Muñoz, of the regional University of Zulia,
suggests that there is kerogen (a mixture of organic compounds found
in sedimentary rocks) in the subsoil of the lagoons of dark waters
between the neighbouring Bravo and Catatumbo rivers.

”The substrata of the lake are rich in petroleum deposits and share
with the river marshes the same geological history. The accumulation
of methane in the atmosphere could be favored by leaks of this gas
through fissures in the rocky mantle and into the marshes and lagoons,”
says Muñoz.

That would explain the mysterious disappearance of the lightning
or the increase in its frequency and intensity after earthquakes in
the area.

The lightning ”appears above La Estrella lagoon and its dark waters,
a little to the west of here. That is where I have best seen it on
summer nights with clear skies,” says the oldest resident of Congo
Mirador, José del Carmen Guerrero, a 79-year-old fisherman and community
activist.

His wife, María Díaz, 65, recalls that ”when I was young, the lightning
was bigger and stronger. In my opinion it has diminished.”

Quiroga says that ”perhaps the methane emissions have varied,” and
the intensity over the lagoons is explained because ”those waters
absorb more energy, and the south of the lake is one of the sites
with most solar radiation in the world: by day, the light dissolves
the methane, but at night, on currents of warm air, it rises quickly
to the high clouds.”

While water vapor goes to the lower clouds to create rain, the methane
ascends up to seven or eight kilometres in the sky, and when the ice
particles in the enormous convective clouds are ionized it produces
electrical discharges sometimes seen as far away as 400 km, from the
islands of the southern Caribbean.

”I am very proud. The lightning produces ozone, and the ozone protects
life on all the planet,” says fisherman Alexis Vega, 49, standing
on the narrow strip of sand between Lake Maracaibo and Ologá lagoon,
after listing the things the town lacks. Half of the houses, made
of metal sheeting, are on the coast, half are built on stilts.

Quiroga picks up again on the explanations: ”At more than six kilometres
high, the lightning is a generating source of ozone. It could be that
the Catatumbo is the leading source of its type in the world,” although
the electrical storms produce just 10 percent of the ozone in the
stratosphere that protects Earth from the Sun's harmful rays.

The lightning is also shown proudly on the shield and the flag of
the oil-rich state of Zulia, in spite of the misery of the ”water
villages”, some 800 residents in Congo Mirador, 200 in Ologá, and
dozens more spread in other settlements.

The inhabitants present a list of complaints because there are shortages
of electricity, potable water, fuel, food, medical care, education
and other services and opportunities. Some see it as governmental
disdain.

In late October and early November, about 20 young artists, participants
in a course of the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art, faced the inclement
weather seeking compensation with the orange, yellow and white light
show.

Meanwhile, the Wayúu Indians, who watch the lightning from the north
side of the 12,000-square-km lake, see in it the spirits of their
dead loved ones, whose souls glow in the clouds.

For the indigenous Barí, on the southwest side of the lake, and whose
language gave rise to the names Catatumbo and Zulia, the lightning
is a concentration of millions of fireflies who gather at night to
pay tribute to the creators.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development
by IPS-Inter Press Service and IFEJ-International Federation of Environmental
Journalists.)


*****
+ IPS/IFEJ - In-Depth Reporting on Sustainable Development (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/sustdev/index.asp)


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