Lightning - Frequency and Distribution

Frequency and Distribution

Lightning strikes 40–50 times a second worldwide, for a total of nearly 1.4 billion flashes per year.

Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning accounts for 25% of lightning globally. The base of the negative region in a cloud is typically at the elevation where freezing occurs. The closer this region is to the ground, the more likely cloud-to-ground strikes are. In the tropics, where the freeze zone is higher, 10% of lightning is CG. At the latitude of Norway (60° lat.) where the freezing elevation is lower, 50% of lightning is CG.

Lightning is not distributed evenly around the planet. About 70% of lightning occurs on land in the tropics, where most thunderstorms occur. The north and south poles and the areas over the oceans have the fewest lightning strikes. The place where lightning occurs most often is near the small village of Kifuka in the mountains of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the elevation is around 975 metres (3,200 ft). On average this region receives 158 lightning strikes per 1 square kilometer (0.39 sq mi) a year. Other hotspots include Catatumbo lightning in Venezuela, Singapore, Teresina in northern Brazil and "Lightning Alley" in Central Florida.

Read more about this topic:  Lightning

Famous quotes containing the words frequency and/or distribution:

    “One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itself; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one’s theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.”
    —Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    “The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
    —George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)