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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

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