Unexpected Domino effect of Covid-19, Lightning reduced by 8%

In a finding with implications for everything from climate change to the future of wildfires, researchers from the US and India have found an unexpected domino effect of COVID-19: a significant reduction in the number of lightning strikes throughout the world.

Effect of COVID-19 on lightning

In 2020, during the lockdown, there was a decrease of around 8 percent in lightning incidents. The information has come to the fore in a joint investigation of scientists from the United States and India.

It happened because COVID-19 produced lockdowns that, in turn, caused people to use fewer fossil fuels, says Earle Williams, a physical meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, who presented his findings at a Union meeting American Geophysicist in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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The effect, Williams says, manifested itself most strongly during the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, in March, April, and May 2020.

Satellite images at the time showed a substantial reduction in the amount of aerosol pollution, particularly in China, Southeast Asia, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the maritime continent of Indonesia, the Philippines, and neighboring island nations.

Meanwhile, two different networks for monitoring global lightning showed reductions of 10 to 20%, depending on whether they counted cloud-to-ground lightning or all lightning, including those running from cloud to cloud.

They also found that the places with the biggest reductions were China, Southeast Asia, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the maritime continent - exactly the places where COVID-19 closures had produced the biggest improvements in air quality.

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Even in the Americas, where the effects of the pandemic were less consistent (with some areas with better air quality and others with worse), the pattern remained, and areas, where pollution was reduced also, saw a reduction in lightning strikes. "In a broad brush there is a consistency," says Williams.

It is an important finding not only for meteorologists, but also for trying to predict the effect of climate change on lightning strikes and, by extension, wildfires.

2,862 people lost their lives in India in 2020

Previously, other research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters also provided information on how aerosols can affect lightning. The research showed how smoke from bushfires in Australia affected lightning during 2019-20. There was a 270 percent increase in lightning over the Tasman Sea during that time compared to the previous year.

If we talk about the people who died in lightning incidents in India, in 2020 around 2,862 people died in these incidents, while in 2018 the death toll was 2,357. While in 2019, this figure was recorded 2,876. This information has come to the fore in response to a question asked at the Lok Sabha on December 1, 2021.

The Second Annual Report on Lightning Incidents in India recently released by the Lightning Resilient India Campaign (LRIC) revealed that between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, there was 1.85 crore of lightning incidents in India. , which is about 34 percent more than last year. Significantly, 1.38 crore lightning incidents were recorded between April 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020.

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