Global warming will increase lightning strikes

BBC : A nearly 50% increase in the number of yearly lightning strikes is expected between 2000 and 2100 if current predictions for global temperatures are correct. A study by David Romps of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues found a new method for relating temperature and lightning by estimating the amount of energy available to drive lightning storms. They found that every 1 °C of temperature increase corresponds to a 12% increase in the number of lightning strikes. Romps’s team compared that prediction with data from the US National Lightning Detector Network and found it matched. An increase in lightning strikes will also cause an increase in wildfires, which contribute to air pollution. Lightning also causes chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere that already account for the majority of the nitrogen oxide greenhouse gases present there.