Learn bits
Geography, Disaster Management
Mahesh

14/03/23 09:57 AM IST

Lightning as a ‘Natural Disaster’

In News
  • Several states have demanded that ‘lightning’ be declared as a ‘natural disaster’ because deaths caused by it surpass any other disaster in the country.
About Lightning
  • Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air, or the ground.
  • In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground.
  • When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that is known as lightning.
  • The flash of lightning temporarily equalizes the charged regions in the atmosphere until the opposite charges build up again.
  • Lightning can occur between opposite charges within the thunderstorm cloud (intra-cloud lightning) or between opposite charges in the cloud and on the ground (cloud-to-ground lightning).
Causes
  • Lightning is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves.
  • During a storm, colliding particles of rain, ice, or snow inside storm clouds increase the imbalance between storm clouds and the ground, and often negatively charge the lower reaches of storm clouds.
  • Objects on the ground, like steeples, trees, and the Earth itself, become positively charged creating an imbalance that nature seeks to remedy by passing current between the two charges.
  • This heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the pealing thunder heard a short time after seeing a lightning flash.
  • When the positive and negative charges grow large enough, a giant spark – lightning – occurs between the two charges within the cloud.
  • Most lightning happens inside a cloud.
Lightning in India
  • According to a newly published yearly report on lightning from the Lightning Resilient India Campaign (LRIC), India may have seen up to 18.5 million lightning strikes between April 2020 and March 2021.
  • Each year, lightning claims the lives of more than 2,500 Indians.
  • According to a study by the Delhi-based RMSI, a global leader in geospatial and engineering solutions, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Jharkhand have witnessed the maximum lightning strikes in recent years.
  • According to government statistics, more than 100,000 individuals have died in the nation as a result of lightning strikes between 1967 and 2019.
Source- The Hindu

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

05 Mar

Arresting women at night

'The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in Deepa versus S. Vijayalakshmi and Others ruled that the legal provision in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, which

Read More

05 Mar

Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023

'The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) looking to wrap up public consultations on the draft Rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 by Mar

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps