Lightning occurrences and intensity over the Indian region: long-term trends and future projections

Chakraborty, Rohit; Chakraborty, Arindam; Basha, Ghouse; Ratnam, Madineni Venkat

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11161-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11161-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11161-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 14

Research article

|

23 Jul 2021

Research article |

| 23 Jul 2021

Lightning occurrences and intensity over the Indian region: long-term trends and future projections

Rohit Chakraborty, Arindam Chakraborty, Ghouse Basha, and Madineni Venkat Ratnam

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-11161-2021-supplement

Data sets

TRMM Lightning Image Sensor observation dataset GHRC DAAC https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning/data/data_lis_trmm.html

National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Reanalysis Product NOAA, ESRL https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.html

Level-3 MODIS Atmosphere Monthly Global Product Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive \& Distribution System Distributed Active Archive Center https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/archive/allData/61/MOD08_M3/

Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Version5 Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip5/

Download

Article (4326 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

In this study, urbanization-induced surface warming has been found to trigger prominent changes in upper-troposphere–lower-stratosphere regions leading to stronger and more frequent lightning extremes over India. Consequently, the implementation of this hypothesis in global climate models reveals that lightning frequency and intensity values across India will rise by ~10–25 % and 15–50 %, respectively, by 2100 at the current urbanization rate, which should be alarming for present policymakers.