Clustering and synchronization of lightning flashes in adjacent thunderstorm cells from lightning location networks data

Abstract

We analyzed sequences of lightning flashes in several thunderstorms on the basis of data from various ground‐based lightning location systems. We identified patterns of clustering and synchronicity of flashes in separate thunderstorm cells, distanced by tens to hundreds of kilometers from each other. This is in‐line with our early findings of lightning synchronicity based on space shuttle images (Yair et al., 2006), hinting at a possible mutual electromagnetic coupling of remote thunderstorms. We developed a theoretical model that is based on the leaky integrate‐and‐fire concept commonly used in models of neural activity, in order to simulate the flashing behavior of a coupled network of thunderstorm cells. In this type of network, the intensity of the electric field Ei within a specific region of thunderstorm (i) grows with time until it reaches the critical breakdown value and generates a lightning flash while its electric field drops to zero, simultaneously adding a delta E to the intensity of the internal electric field in all thundercloud cells (Ej,k,l…) that are linked to it. The value of ΔE is inversely proportional to the distance between the “firing” cell i and its neighbors j, k, l; we assumed that thunderstorm cells are not identical and occupy a grid with random spacing and organization. Several topologies of the thunderstorm network were tested with varying degrees of coupling, assuming a predetermined probability of links between active cells. The results suggest that when the group coupling in the network is higher than a certain threshold value, all thunderstorm cells will flash in a synchronized manner.