Global warming to increase lightnings

Washington: Global warming will lead to a 50 per cent increase in lightning strikes across the US during this century, according to a new study. Researchers looked at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models and concluded that their combined effect will generate more frequent electrical discharges to the ground. "With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive," said Climate scientist David Romps, from the University of California, Berkeley.

"This has to do with water vapour, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere. Warming causes there to be more water vapour in the atmosphere, and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time," said Romps. More lightning strikes mean more human injuries; estimates of people struck each year range from the hundreds to nearly a thousand, with scores of deaths.

But another significant impact of increased lightning strikes would be more wildfires, since half of all fires are ignited by lightning, Romps said. Romps and graduate student Jacob Seeley hypothesised that two atmospheric properties precipitation and cloud buoyancy together might be a predictor of lightning, and looked at observations during 2011 to see if there was a correlation.