The phenomena have already been linked to everything from tornadoes in the midwestern United States to fires in Indonesia to hurricanes in Central America. But Earth scientists still have much to learn about how the phenomena affect weather systems around the world.
Many questions regarding the root cause and physics behind the two events remain unanswered.
Their initial results show promise. In the future, the researchers hope to detect other stages of the phenomenas' development and then create models to predict the events' occurrence and their destructive force years in advance.