Abstract
AbstractGlobal climate models struggle to simulate both the convection and cloud ice fundamental to lightning formation. We use the first convection‐permitting, future climate simulations for the lightning hot spot of Africa, at the same time utilizing an ice‐based lightning parametrization. Both the model and observations show that lightning over Africa's drier areas, as well as the moist Congo, have more lightning per rainfall than other regions. Contrary to results in the literature, the future projection shows little increase in total lightning (~107 flashes (or 2%) per degree warming). This is a consequence of increased stability reducing the number of lightning days, largely offsetting the increased graupel and updraft velocity driving an increase in lightning per lightning day. The next step is to establish if these results are robust across other models and, if combined with parametrized‐convection models, whether ensemble‐based information on the possible responses of lightning to climate change can be investigated.
Highlights
Lightning is a serious hazard in many parts of Africa, being one of the main global hot spots of lightning activity (Albrecht et al, 2016)
This study provides novel insights into the nature of lightning and climate change due to its focus on the underinvestigated region of Africa, its use of new convection‐permitting climate simulations, and its use of an ice‐based lightning parametrization
These advanced approaches for simulating lightning are rarely present in the literature, and to date, there has been no such study over Africa
Summary
Lightning is a serious hazard in many parts of Africa, being one of the main global hot spots of lightning activity (Albrecht et al, 2016). Three past studies take an intermediate approach and implement empirical relationships between lightning flashes and the fundamental components of the charging process, notably including aspects of cloud ice and updraft strength (Finney et al, 2018; Jacobson & Streets, 2009; Romps, 2019) These papers all find decreases in tropical lightning activity under climate change, which is contrary to the majority of non‐ice‐based approaches of simulating lightning (Clark et al, 2017; Finney, Doherty, Wild, & Abraham, 2016; Romps et al, 2014; Schumann & Huntrieser, 2007; Williams, 2005). A complete description of the simulations is provided by Stratton et al (2018) and Kendon et al (2019), and we provide some details of the cloud and microphysics schemes in supporting information Text S1
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