Lightning Casualties and Damages in the United States from 1959 to 1994

Curran, E. Brian; Holle, Ronald L.; López, Raúl E.

doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2000)013<3448:lcadit>2.0.co;2

Cited by 198 publications

(184 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Severe weather, associated with thunderstorms and lightning, causes fatalities, injuries and financial losses (Curran et al, 2000). Thus, the private and the insurance sector have a strong interest in reliable climatologies for such events, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Spatio-temporal modelling of lightning climatologies for complex terrain

Simon

Umlauf

Zeileis

et al. 2017

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. This study develops methods for estimating lightning climatologies on the day −1 km −2 scale for regions with complex terrain and applies them to summertime observations (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) of the lightning location system ALDIS in the Austrian state of Carinthia in the Eastern Alps.Generalized additive models (GAMs) are used to model both the probability of occurrence and the intensity of lightning. Additive effects are set up for altitude, day of the year (season) and geographical location (longitude/latitude). The performance of the models is verified by 6-fold crossvalidation.The altitude effect of the occurrence model suggests higher probabilities of lightning for locations on higher elevations. The seasonal effect peaks in mid-July. The spatial effect models several local features, but there is a pronounced minimum in the north-west and a clear maximum in the eastern part of Carinthia. The estimated effects of the intensity model reveal similar features, though they are not equal. The main difference is that the spatial effect varies more strongly than the analogous effect of the occurrence model.A major asset of the introduced method is that the resulting climatological information varies smoothly over space, time and altitude. Thus, the climatology is capable of serving as a useful tool in quantitative applications, i.e. risk assessment and weather prediction.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Spatio-temporal modelling of lightning climatologies for complex terrain

Simon

Umlauf

Zeileis

et al. 2017

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Surprisingly, there has been little systematic collection of information on lightning deaths in many regions of the world making it difficult to estimate the global annual rates of lightning fatalities (Gomes and Kadir, 2011). The reported fatalities published in different reports, proceedings and refereed journals are from the United States (Pakiam et al, 1981;Lopez et al, 1993;Lopez and Holle, 1995, 1996, 1998Shearman and Ojala, 1999;Curran et al, 2000;Cooper, 2001;Adekoya and Nolte, 2005;Holle et al, 2005), Canada (Hornstein, 1962;Mills et al, 2006Mills et al, , 2008Mills et al, , 2010, Malawi Salerno et al, 2012), Zimbabwe (Castle and Kreft, 1974;Smith, 1991), Australia (Coates et al, 1993), the United Kingdom (Elsom, 2001), Brazil (Cardoso et al, 2014), China (Zhang et al, 2011), South Africa (Blumenthal, 2005), Swaziland (Dlamini, 2009), Colombia (Aldana et al, 2014), Spain (Aguado et al, 2000), Turkey (Tanriover and Kahraman, 2013), Singapore (Pakiam et al, 1981) and Vietnam (Holle, 2008). However, the studies pertaining to lightning fatalities over the Indian region are scanty, except for a few studies by Nizamuddin (1992), Murli Das et al (2007, 2009) and Gadge and Shrigiriwar (2013).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Apart from rate per million people and rank, the lightning fatalities were also normalized by area of the respective unit (state) to know the density of lightning fatalities. Furthermore, the state fatalities were mapped separately (Curran et al, 2000;Dlamini, 2009;Zhang et al, 2011).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lightning fatalities over India: 1979–2011

Singh

2015

Meteorological Applications

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Information on fatalities in India as a result of lightning flashes has been extracted from a database on disastrous weather events of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). Records dating from 1979 to 2011 indicate that about 5259 persons have been killed by lightning strikes in India. The maximum number of lightning fatalities was observed in the states of Maharashtra (29%), West Bengal (12%) and Uttar Pradesh (9%). The spatial variation shows that lightning fatalities are higher over west central India. A significant number of males (89%) have been killed by lightning flashes compared to females (5%) and children (6%) in India, which is most likely due to the larger proportion of males working and moving outdoors in lonely conditions. The overall fatality rate is about 0.25 per million population per year in India. The lightning fatalities are significantly more common in the rainy and the summer seasons. Comparisons were also made between the results of the present study and similar studies carried out in different parts of the world. Therefore, this study provides useful information on the risky lightning time in India to indicate a public awareness and lightning safety campaign.

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“…Lightning strike kills about 90 individuals in the United States per year (Curran et al, 1997). Approximately 15 to 25 people die annually in the United States due to dog attacks (Sacks et al, 1996;CDC, 1997a), and 200 from accidents involving deer (Jones, 1999).…”

Section: Factorcontrasting

confidence: 57%