Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articl...-field.htm

EXCERPT: The sun may actually be influencing lightning strikes on Earth. How? The sun is temporarily "bending" Earth's magnetic field and allowing a shower of energetic particles to enter the upper atmosphere. In fact, it could be causing as much as 50 percent more lightning strikes in the UK...

I'm not so sure of the article itself, maybe the paper doesn't quite say what the article does.

I would consider that if Solar activity did play such a role in "Charging Lightening" there would be more evidence from satellites that are geosynchronous from about the weather system and more effects below (e.g. E.M. power fluctuations etc) While generally it's known that lightening storms can cause an E.M. output which can cause electrical disruption and thunderclouds can block satellite coverage, that's all sourced from the cloud itself and not something "exo-ternal".

That being said it doesn't mean that the usage of a number of different frequency in radio communications hasn't had an effect on storms.