Filling the Gap: Lightning Climatology of Southwest Asia, Northeast Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean

Lightning is a fundamental part of the Earth's climate system, occurring worldwide at a rate of about 45 flashes per second on average. It has recently been recognized as an Essential Climate Variable and serves as an indicator of thermodynamic instability.

In the past years, lighting climatologies have been derived for various regions worldwide. However, this does not yet include vast parts of Southwest Asia, i.e., the broader region encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf, as well as the Middle East (Anatolia, Levant, and Arabian Peninsula) and the Caucasus regions. Unlike the tropical lightning hotspots (e.g., the Congo Basin or Venezuela), this area is often overlooked in global lightning studies due to its lower overall flash density. Despite its low average flash rates, the region displays complex and rather unique interactions between distinct atmospheric circulation patterns and local thermodynamic processes in the atmosphere.

This study aims to unravel the complex factors that control lightning activity in a transitional zone where these different physical processes intersect. Specifically, a reliable lightning climatology for Southwest Asia and the neighboring regions is developed that combines data from available space missions and different ground-based detection networks for the period 2017-2023. The resulting spatial patterns of lightning flash density, along with their seasonal and inter-annual variability, contribute to a better understanding of the effects of orography, land-sea configuration, land cover, and prevailing regional weather patterns on lightning. In order to attribute the obtained activity patterns to specific thermodynamic conditions and aerosol-cloud interactions that sustain electrification even in areas with limited moisture availability, atmospheric reanalysis data are employed with a focus on cloud properties.