‘Punjab witnessed 331% increase in lightning strikes’

Bathinda: The number and frequency of lightning strikes is increasing globally with bolts from the blue killing more people every subsequent year, data shows.
Between April 2020 and March 2021, 18.5 million lightning strikes were recorded in India, a 34% rise over 13.8 million strikes between April 2019 and March 2020. These statistics were shared at a webinar on lightning, organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth magazine.
Some of the states at the receiving end of these strikes are Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal. It was claimed that in Punjab, the increase in number of lightning strikes has been a staggering 331% annually, while in Bihar — where 401 people lost their lives to lightning strikes during the year — there was a 168% rise. Overall, 1,697 people were struck down dead by lightning in India between March 2020 and April 2021.
“There is growing scientific evidence that climate change may be sparking more lightning across the world. Rapid urbanisation and population growth have guaranteed an intensification of human exposure to lightning hazard,” says Down To Earth managing editor Richard Mahapatra.
A 2015 California University study has projected that an increase in average global temperatures by 1ºC would increase the frequency of lightning by 12%.
Another paper, soon to be published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, warns that the frequency and intensity of lightning strikes in India are expected to increase by 15-50% respectively by the end of the century.
A foreboding dimension of the surge in lightning strike numbers is their link to forest fires. “Scientists from the Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University in Srinagar, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, have studied the concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in different weather conditions in the central Himalayan region. They have found a five-time higher concentration of CCN in the atmosphere during forest fires as against during rains. In May 2021, researchers in Australia linked excess CCN to the increased number of lightning strikes during the 2019-20 Australia forest fires,” says Kiran Pandey, programme director of CSE’s environmental resources unit.
Some progress has been made to counter the adverse effects of lightning strikes. The rise in fatalities has prompted the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to start lightning forecasts from April 1, 2019. Lightning India Resilient Campaign (LRIC), a joint initiative of several bodies such as Climate Resilient Observing-Systems Promotion Council (CROPC), National Disaster Management Authority, IMD, Union Ministry of Earth Sciences and others aims to reduce the number of deaths due to lightning strikes to less than 1,200 a year by 2022.
“The LRIC says its campaign has been successful in bringing down deaths by more than 60% within two years. Dedicated efforts by governments of states like Andhra Pradesh and Odisha have led to a 70% reduction in fatalities,” webinar was told.
“The lightning incidents recorded reveal that seasonality of lightning is different for different states. Therefore, it is important that the lightning risk management programme for each state is customised according to the seasonality, intensity and frequency of lightning. States should undertake lightning micro-zonation for the regions inside their boundaries, depending on their geography, to handle the disaster and death risks better. These are LRIC’s recommendations,” says Pandey.