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Abstract. Lightning is one of the major threats to multimegawatt wind turbines and a concern for modern aircraft due to the use of lightweight composite materials. Both wind turbines and aircraft can initiate lightning, and very favorable conditions for lightning initiation occur in winter thunderstorms. Moreover, winter thunderstorms are characterized by a relatively high production of very energetic lightning. This paper reviews the different types of lightning interactions and summarizes the well-known winter thunderstorm areas. Until now comprehensive maps of global distribution of winter lightning prevalence to be used for risk assessment have been unavailable. In this paper we present the global winter lightning activity for a period of 5 years. Using lightning location data and meteorological re-analysis data, six maps are created: annual winter lightning stroke density, seasonal variation of the winter lightning and the annual number of winter thunderstorm days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the maps confirmed Japan to be one of the most active regions but other areas such as the Mediterranean and the USA are active as well. In the Southern Hemisphere, Uruguay and surrounding area, the southwestern Indian Ocean and the Tasman Sea experience the highest activity. The maps provided here can be used in the development of a risk assessment.

This paper examines the adoption of environmental practices in small and medium sized companies in the surface mining industry in Catalonia (Spain). To fulfill this aim, a survey of 41 items concerning environmental management systems and environmentally sustainable practices has been conducted. Results show that companies have committed themselves to environmental and sustainable issues. The majority of companies claim to understand the effects of their activities on the environment and they care for responsible access and management of natural resources. Restoration plans and the annual waste declaration are mandatory in Catalonia, and rational resources exploitation practices have been adopted by a high percentage of mines. Finally, some examples of good environmentally sustainable practices are introduced.

This paper examines the role and diffusion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) management, especially in relation with the adoption of other management systems, in small and medium sized companies in the surface mining industry in Catalonia (Spain).Specifically, it identifies the most salient CSR practices, procedures and metrics and the profiles of companies more prone to adopt them. To fulfill this aim, a survey has been conducted. Results show that mining companies are familiar with CSR practices, but there is not much formalization of procedures and measurement systems of CSR yet.Results show that the majority of socially responsible practices are related to environmental issues and therefore there is a relation between CSR and the application of environmental management systems. The analysis reveals that the management of CSR activities improves with the diffusion of knowledge on CSR practices. A second survey collected the opinion of professional associations in the sector. Respondents indicate that an improvement in CSR management will lead to a better global competitive position.

In the near future, much of the Earth's lightning activity will be continuously monitored from space by lightning imagers placed in geostationary orbit. These new satellite-based instruments open a new era of weather monitoring and research into the role of thunderstorm processes in the dynamics of the atmosphere and in climate change. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on the first of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-R Series (GOES-16 at 75.2 W) is the first lightning detector in geostationary orbit (Goodman et al., 2013; Rudlosky et al., 2019a, 2019b). GLM is based on its predecessors, the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) Boccippio et al., 2002, Christian et al., 1989). In China, the Lightning Mapping Imager (LMI) on the Feng-Yun4 is detecting lightning in Asia (Yang et al., 2017) and in the near future, Europe and Africa will be continuously monitored by the Lightning Imager (LI) on the Meteosat Third Generation satellites (MTG) (Stuhlmann et al., 2005). All of these systems, new to the geostationary orbit, use optical imagers at the narrow spectral line at the 777.4 nm infrared emission of atomic oxygen that is associated with hot lightning channels (e.g., Soler et al., 2020). The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) on the International Space Station (ISS) consists of a suite of optical instruments and X-ray and gamma-ray detectors for investigating lightning, Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) (e.g., Chanrion et al., 2019; Neubert et al., 2019). ASIM is equipped with three photometers at 180-230 nm, 337.0 and 777.4 nm spectral bands plus two one-megapixel cameras at 337.0 and 777.4 nm. The objective of the 337.0 nm (blue) and 777.4 nm