Working in research collaborations to understand how lightning and rainfall are affected by changes in temperature and air pollution from place to place around the world. New knowledge of this kind contributes to building our understanding of strong thunderstorms around the world, improving the way we forecast them. Meanwhile these findings can help mitigate losses of life and property as well as limit disruptions to transportation, the global supply chain and energy operations. Examples of the group’s work can be found here.
A figure from Stolz et al. (2017; J. Geophys. Res.) illustrating the impact of various factors on global thunderstorm intensity.
The next step in the project involves putting previous research to work and testing the performance of a novel model to predict lightning around the world for individual thunderstorms – from the Amazon, to the Congo, to the remote reaches of the tropical western Pacific Ocean and beyond.
