Lightning Characteristics Over Humid Regions and Arid Regions and Their Association With Aerosols Over Northern India

The association between aerosol and lightning has been investigated with long-term decadal data (2005–2014) for lightning, aerosol optical depth (AOD), relative humidity, and effective cloud droplet size. To understand the complex relationship between aerosol and lightning, two different regions with different climatic and weather conditions, a humid region R1 (22°–29° N, 89°–92° E) and an arid region R2 (23°–28° N, 70°–76° E) of northern India, were chosen for the study domain. The results show that lightning activity was observed to occur more over the humid region R1, i.e., 1141 days (1/3 of total days), than over the arid region R2, i.e., 740 days (1/5 of total days). Also, over the humid region R1, the highest lightning flash density was recorded as nearly 4.6 × 10(–4) flashes/km(2)/day observed for 18 days (1.5%); on the contrary, over the arid region R2, the maximum lightning flash density was observed to be 2.5 × 10(–4) flashes/km(2)/day and occurred for about 22 days (2.9%). The analysis shows that a nonlinear relationship exists between aerosol and lightning with a highly associated influence of relative humidity. A very significant positive and negative co-relation that varies with relative humidity has been observed between AOD and lightning for both humid and arid regions. This shows relative humidity is the key factor in determining the increase or decrease of lightning activity. This study also shows that the larger the cloud droplet size, the higher the relative humidity and vice versa. This study emphasizes that aerosol concentration in the atmosphere influences cloud microphysics by modulating the size of cloud droplets and thereby regulating the lightning frequency. The atmospheric humidity is the driving factor in deciding the positive or negative co-relationship between aerosol and lightning. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00024-022-02981-6.