Sorry, found this article just after I hit Post on the last entry. Apologies for the extra post in advance, but I thought this was a bit too important (in my opinion) to stifle based on an averaged number of posts per day guideline. In any event, pretty cool. Kind of confirms what I was thinking about the preferential bands of lightning around the earth's axis. Not entirely surprised considering I basically said as much as I expected this, just a few days ago.

(First Global Connection Between Earth And Space Weather Found)
http://www.physorg.com/news77293757.html
" Weather on Earth has a surprising connection to space weather occurring high in the electrically-charged upper atmosphere, known as the ionosphere, according to new results from NASA satellites. "This discovery will help improve forecasts of turbulence in the ionosphere, which can disrupt radio transmissions and the reception of signals from the Global Positioning System," said Thomas Immel of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author of a paper on the research published August 11 in Geophysical Research Letters.
...
The ionosphere is formed by solar X-rays and ultraviolet light, which break apart atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a layer of electrically-charged gas known as plasma. The densest part of the ionosphere forms two bands of plasma close to the equator at a height of almost 250 miles.
...
Using pictures from IMAGE, the team discovered four pairs of bright regions where the ionosphere was almost twice as dense as the average. Three of the bright pairs were located over tropical rainforests with lots of thunderstorm activity -- the Amazon Basin in South America, the Congo Basin in Africa, and Indonesia. A fourth pair appeared over the Pacific Ocean. Researchers confirmed that the thunderstorms over the three tropical rainforest regions produce tides of air in our atmosphere using a computer simulation developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo., called the Global Scale Wave Model
The connection to plasma bands in the ionosphere surprised scientists at first because these tides from the thunderstorms can not affect the ionosphere directly.
...
However, the researchers discovered the tides could affect the plasma bands indirectly by modifying a layer of the atmosphere below the bands that shapes them. Below the plasma bands, a layer of the ionosphere called the E-layer becomes partially electrified during the day. This region creates the plasma bands above it when high-altitude winds blow plasma in the E-layer across the Earth's magnetic field. Since plasma is electrically charged, its motion across the Earth's magnetic field acts like a generator, creating an electric field. This electric field shapes the plasma above into the two bands. Anything that would change the motion of the E-layer plasma would also change the electric fields they generate, which would then reshape the plasma bands above. "

Okay, why do I think this is important? If nothing else it basically parallels the comments I made just a few days ago on the Martian Spiders. But inreference to parallels in electrical banding patterns of lightning strikes on Earth. Specifically, here.

Ignore the URL's to maps on that post before April 95, apparently they don't exist (didn't realize the project didn't start gathering data until April; my bad, I'll cop to not checking, and thus assuming they had data for the full '95 year). The trest of the URL's should be good, tho'.

(On another note, I can now see how too many branches/posts makes trains of thought a bit hard to follow, and makes it hard to find a specific post. Will try to condense in the future.)

Long story short, I noted that weather on Earth displays distinct banding patterns along preferential latitudes, somewhat regardless of season. IE, as the "majority" of strikes moves seasonally, we still see a ring around particular latitudes during any given month. Some months it's a little weaker but still visible.

The recent article from today post at the beginning of this post basically shows what I was saying, and assuming. Score one for the good guy. There DOES in fact appear to be a rough "ring" of plasma/electricity around the equator. I'm fairly certain that under further observation they may find similar banding about half way up the northern hemisphere and half way down the southern, albeit possibly a bit weaker (considering the densest concentrations of lightnign strikes appear to be around the equator in Africa, South America, and across the oceans around the equator). In the overall yearly maps there's also a slight dead zone between the two rings at/around the equator which can be most easily seen over the ocean. IE, at the nearly exact equator, you get very few strikes over the ocean, whereas just above and below you get a fairly high number of strikes, consistent with two "rings" spaced a bit apart over said locations.

This is also relatively consistent with what EU theory has predicted for some time about there being rings around the equators of planets/solar system bodies.

But EU aside, it's pretty cool that they've made this particular "discovery." I just didn't think they'd post it within a couple days of me talking about lightning's "preferential banding" patterns. There must be good karma out there somewhere, or somethign like that. :)