Overview of Lightning Trend and Recent Lightning Variability over Sri Lanka

Abstract

The study was conducted to analyze spatial and temporal variations of lightning activity over Sri Lanka and the surrounding coastal belt region bounded by 5.75–10.00 N and 79.50–89.00 E. Flash data collected by the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite from 1998 to 2014 and the Lightning Imaging Sensor placed on the International Space Station (ISS) from 2018 to 2021 were used for the study. The Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator were applied to annual and seasonal lightning data from 1998 to 2014 to identify the trends in the TRMM dataset. A positive slope of 0.23 was obtained for annual flash densities, while a slope of 0.956 was obtained for First Inter-Monsoon (FIM) seasonal data. Considering the ISS data, the annual variation of lightning activity in 2020 displays the lowest flash density, whereas the highest is represented in 2019 with a value of 10.48 flashes km−2 year−1. The highest mean flash density is observed in Colombo in 2019 at a value of 34.85 flashes km−2 year−1. Overall, April displayed the highest annual flash distribution from 2018 to 2021, whereas the second peak was mostly viewed around September and November. All districts have displayed a significant amount of lightning during April for the period 2018 to 2021. FIM displayed the highest lightning distribution over the country. When considering the seasonal variation, districts belonging to the wet zone and intermediate zone displayed most flashes during the FIM.