Lightning activity shows increasing trend in past two decades: Minister

Lightning activities have shown an increasing trend over India particularly in the North-Eastern region of the country in the past two decades, said Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh on Friday.

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science and Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences on Friday informed the Lok Sabha that a mobile app called "Damini" lightning app has been developed to monitor lightning activities in the skies.

In reply to a question on Lok Sabha, the Minister further elaborated that the lightning activities have shown an increasing trend all over India and the purpose of this app is to monitor all lightning activities, specifically for India and alerts the person if lightning is happening near the person by GPS notification, in the distance under 20 kilometres and 40 kilometres radius.

A detailed description of instructions and precautions is provided in the app, while in the lightning-prone area.

As per recent studies, parts of the Indian peninsula, particularly Northeast and East, have registered a sharp increase of lighting over the past two decades. The increase is minimal over Central India and moderate over the rest of the country, informed an official release by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, an autonomous research and development institution under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), has established a lightning location network strategically installed at 83 places in the country to detect and locate lightning strikes with utmost accuracy.

The Central processor of this network, located at IITM, receives and processes the signal received from the network and identifies the location of lightning strikes with less than 500 metres of accuracy. The output from this network is shared with India Meteorological Department (IMD) and various State governments and is used for nowcasting purposes.

From the National Weather Forecasting Centre, these forecasts and warnings are given on the meteorological sub-divisional scale whereas State Meteorological Centres issue the same at the district level.

In addition to that, thunderstorms and associated disastrous weather phenomena are covered by nowcast (forecast for next 3 hours issued every 3 hours) in the location/district level by State Meteorological Centres. At present this facility is extended to all the districts and for about 1084 stations across the country.