Lightning & Climate

Guardian: "Climate crisis will increase frequency of lightning-sparked wildfires, study finds." A trend toward more lightning-caused fires is 'probably making wildfires more deadly by producing more wildfire smoke and helping to drive a surge in air quality issues from coast to coast, especially over the past several years.' In my part of the country, "over the last 40 years, thunderstorms and other weather conditions favoring lightning have been happening more often across many parts of the US west, including western Washington, western Oregon, the California Central valley, and higher elevations throughout the Rocky Mountains." Europe has been drawn in as well. "This year’s fire season has been the worst in European history, driven in part by lightning-caused wildfires in Spain." In Canada, "huge fires this year have burned more than 200% of normal forest area, the vast majority of which were caused by lightning." Dmitri Kalashnikov, a climate scientist at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at University of California-Merced, is the lead author of a study [https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006108] published last wk, the first to use machine learning techniques to tackle this problem. They examined data 'looking at future changes in lightning frequency and changes in weather variables like air temperature, humidity, wind and soil moisture that can predict how likely a fire is to spread.' Consonant with these projections, "thousands of lightning strikes this week have sparked at least 20 new fires and burned tens of thousands of acres across California’s Central valley and into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, with one fire destroying several structures in the Gold Rush-era settlement of Chinese Camp east of Modesto." In contrast, the study projects 98% more lightning-instigated wildfires in the western US “due to more lightning, or more fire weather, or both," but with the Pacific Northwest relatively spared because a 'moistening environment.' Not personally so sure of this point, as we have had very dry summers 3 yrs in a row. "Over a recent 15-year span, wildfire smoke killed about a thousand people in the US each year...a surge in lightning-caused fires could cause America’s smoke epidemic to take the lives of potentially more than 20,000 people a year by mid-century." Additionally, should be an associated increase in flash flooding + mudslides. "More smoke from more lightning-caused fires may also coat glaciers in Canada, Greenland and Europe with dark particles that can make them melt more quickly." Finally, remote lightning-caused wildfires also tend to drain emergency response capacity away from urban areas. Cheers.