India News | Lightning Activity Has Shown Increasing Trend in Past 2 Decades: Jitendra Singh
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. In the past two decades, lightning activity has shown an increasing trend in the country, especially in the northeast, east and parts of peninsular India, Union Earth Sciences Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.
New Delhi, Aug 6 (PTI) In the past two decades, lightning activity has shown an increasing trend in the country, especially in the northeast, east and parts of peninsular India, Union Earth Sciences Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.
The increase is minimal over central India and moderate over the rest of the country, he said.
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Like any other natural hazard, lightning also exhibits inter-annual variability.
Compared to 2019 (when 47,69,160 cloud to ground lightning strikes were recorded), there is a 25 per cent increase in lightning strikes in 2020 (63,30,139). However in 2021, data till June shows a 10 per cent decrease in lightning strikes compared to the corresponding period of 2020, he said.
"As per recent studies, lightning activity has shown an increasing trend over India in the past two decades. Northeast, east and parts of peninsular India have registered a sharp increase in lighting over the past two decades.
"The increase is minimal over central India and moderate over the rest of the country," he said in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha.
According to a research paper co-authored by M Rajeevan, the former secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, and published earlier this year, lightning killed more than 8,862 people in the country from 1971-2019.
Singh said the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, an autonomous research and development body under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), has established a lightning location network strategically installed at 83 places to detect and locate lightning strikes with utmost accuracy.
The Central processor of this network, located at IITM, receives and processes the signal received from the network and identifies the location of lightning strikes with less than 500 metres accuracy.
The output from this network is shared with India Meteorological Department and various state governments and is used for nowcasting purposes.
From the National Weather Forecasting Centre, these forecasts are given on a meteorological sub-divisional scale whereas state meteorological centres issue the same at the district level.
Additionally, thunderstorms and associated disastrous weather phenomena are covered by nowcast (forecast for next three hours issued every three hours) in the location or district-level by the state meteorological centres.
At present, this facility is extended to all the districts and for about 1,084 stations across the country, the minister added.
Along with the forecasts and warnings for thunderstorms, guidelines for the public for necessary precautions while getting exposed to thunderstorms are also being included nowadays. These guidelines had been finalised in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NOMA).
In 2020, Damini Lightning apps were developed by IITM-Pune and MoES. It monitors all lightning activities which are happening specifically for all India and alerts a person if lightning GPS notification is under 20 km and 40 km radius.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)