• States that lightning plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and in the initiation of wildfires, but the impact of global warming on lightning rates is poorly constrained
• Proposes that the lightning flash rate is proportional to the convective available potential energy (CAPE) times the precipitation rate
• Uses observations to show that the product of CAPE and precipitation explains 77% of the variance in the time series of total cloud-to-ground lightning flashes over the contiguous United States (CONUS)
• Finds that storms convert CAPE times precipitated water mass to discharged lightning energy with an efficiency of 1%
• Finds that when this proxy is applied to 11 climate models, CONUS lightning strikes are predicted to increase 12 ± 5% per degree Celsius of global warming and about 50% over this century

Open source PDF available here