Review Article: A comprehensive review of datasets and methodologies employed to produce thunderstorm climatologies

Abstract

Abstract. Thunderstorm and lightning climatological research is conducted with a view to increasing knowledge about the distribution of thunderstorm related hazards and to gain an understanding of environmental factors increasing or decreasing their frequency. There are three main methodologies used in the construction of thunderstorm climatologies; thunderstorm frequency, thunderstorm tracking or lightning flash density. These approaches utilise a wide variety of underpinning datasets and employ many different methods ranging from correlations with potential influencing factors and mapping the distribution of thunderstorm day frequencies, to tracking individual thunderstorm cell movements. Meanwhile, lightning flash density climatologies are produced using lightning data alone and these studies therefore follow a more standardised format. Whilst lightning flash density climatologies are primarily concerned with the occurrence of cloud to ground lightning, the occurrence of any form of lightning confirms the presence of a thunderstorm and can therefore be used in the compilation of a thunderstorm climatology. Regardless of approach, the choice of analysis method is heavily influenced by dataset coverage, quality and the controlling factors under investigation. The issues investigated must also reflect the needs of the end use application to ensure that the results can be used effectively to reduce exposure to hazard, improve forecasting or enhance climatological understanding.

A regional lightning climatology of the UK and Ireland and sensitivity to alternative detection networks

“…These lightning locations systems are subject to a number of potential limitations (Enno et al, 2016). DE measures the percentage of total lightning strikes detected whilst LA measure the median distance at which the location of lightning strikes are misassigned (Hayward et al, 2020).…”

“…This information can be used for preparedness, scheduling high risk activities at low‐risk times and for supporting forecasting. A total lightning climatology (including cloud‐ground, cloud‐cloud and intra‐cloud lightning) provides quantification of exposure to thunderstorm hazards because the presence of lightning is the only product of a thunderstorm that confirms a convective event as thundery (Hayward et al ., 2020) and is therefore an appropriate proxy for thunderstorm distribution and behaviour.…”

A New Thunderstorm Identification Algorithm Based on Total Lightning Activity

“…Thunderstorms have a severe impact on many sectors, such as agriculture, aviation, infrastructures and power systems (Houston et al., 2015). Lightning caused by thunderstorms (Hayward et al., 2020) is responsible for damages and interruptions of power system (Li et al., 2013; Okabe & Takami, 2011; Perez et al., 2020; Takami et al., 2014; Visacro et al., 2012). Although there are many kinds of lightning protection equipment in power system (Hu et al., 2021), severe damage caused by lightning is one of the biggest threat in operation (Guo et al., 2019), especially devices in bulk power transmission schemes (Goertz et al., 2018; Zhuang et al., 2016).…”

A New Approach for the Analysis of Deep Convective Events: Thunderstorm Intensity Index

“…There is a long history of thunderstorm studies using various data sources and methods. A comprehensive review of the methods is provided by Hayward et al [17]. With respect to climatological studies, the most commonly used methods are thunderstorm frequency, thunderstorm tracking and flash density.…”

“…In nowcasting, the focus is on the detection of the first lightning jump; therefore, the forecaster would gain as much lead time as possible. Although the storm usually produces multiple jumps during the life cycle [17], later jumps do not offer as much of a lead time and are considered less relevant [24]. Although very powerful, the lightning jump method still does not provide information about the location of the severe effects.…”