Science Source

Projected increase in lightning strikes in the United States due to global warming

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