I was a second away from posting that article....lol
What is interesting is the this little line...
“Finally, he noticed that when the ions reach the air, the positive and negative charges neutralize. This produces a burst of infrared radiation that can fool weather satellites into thinking the ground near the fault is warming up, even when ground-based weather stations say it isn't. This is easily visible by GOES weather satellites, he says.”
Since a lot of the AGW models are based on Satellite derived readings...how much does this play into their variability?
However I am sure you like that article! On a side note I wonder if this electric charging might also explain the various reports of booming like what was heard last week in Guthrie Texas?
I would be willing to bet not all of the burst is in just the infrared spectrum.
The reports of earthquake lights, ball lightening type phenomena, etc that you hear about every now and then.
Plus, some animals, can see nearly into the infrared spectrum, more so than we can.