Global Thunderstorm 'Map' Reveals How Storms Change with Climate

A new initiative may be key to measuring the impact of climate change on thunderstorms. Scientists have created a draft of a global thunderstorm map, which could be crucial when it comes to storm prediction in the future.

"To date, satellites have only provided snapshots of thunderstorm incidence," said Colin Price, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We want to use our algorithm to determine how climate change will affect the frequency and intensity of thunderstorms. According to climate change predictions, every one percent rise in global temperature will lead to a 10 percent increase in thunderstorm activity. This means that we could see 25 percent more lightning by the end of the century."

The researchers used a vast global lightning network of 70 weather stations to examine where storms formed. Each hour, the exact GPS time of every detected lightning pulse was registered. Then, the scientists calculated the difference in arrive times of signals, using data from four to five different stations to locate individual lightning strokes anywhere on the globe. Finally, they grouped the detected flashes into clusters of thunderstorm cells.

"When we clustered the lightning strikes into storm cells, we found that there were around 1,000 thunderstorms active at any time somewhere on the globe," said Price. "How lightning will be distributed in storms, and how the number and intensity of storms will change in the future, are questions we are working on answering."

The researchers found that lightning activity peaked at 1900 GMT every day. In addition, only 50 percent of thunderstorm cells existed over land, which implies that land storms have much more lightning than ocean storms. The findings reveal a bit more about global storms, which could be crucial when it comes to predicting the change in thunderstorms and their distribution in the future.

The findings are published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

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