Lightning as a ‘Natural Disaster’

Subject: Geography

Section: Physical Geography (Climatology)

Concept:

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).

Major Causes lightning:

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, but sometimes it happens between the cloud and the ground.
A build-up of positive charge builds up on the ground beneath the cloud, attracted to the negative charge in the bottom of the cloud and the ground’s positive charge concentrates around anything that sticks up – trees, lightning conductors and even people.
The positive charge from the ground connects with the negative charge from the clouds and a spark of lightning strikes.

Inclusion of lightning as a natural disaster:

The Centre should include lightning as a “natural disaster” to minimise lightning-related deaths.
This would help States prepare long-term mitigation through coordinated efforts with local agencies and reconstruction activities to build disaster-resilient infrastructure.