Lightning activity accompanying tropical cyclones

This thesis is focused on study of properties of the lightning strokes accompanying tropical cyclones. We investigated lightning densities, median energies of lightning strokes, their multiplicity, radial distribution of lightning and a correlation of lightning activity with the development of the cyclone wind speed. We used 429 cyclones occuring all over the world in the period 2012-2017 and lightning data provided by WWLLN (World Wide Lightning Location Network). We found substantial differences in the lightning densities and energies when comparing cyclones of different intensities appearing in both hemispheres and individual basins. Radial distribution of lightning in the cyclones shows a strong maximum of the stroke density and a minimum of the median stroke energy near the center of the cyclone. The increase in the lightning density often preceded the increase of wind, but the time interval between them varied substantially when considering the cyclone intensity and the hemisphere of cyclone occurrence. The analysis of properties of lightning accompanying nearly five hundred tropical cyclones (the largest data set so far) revealed that there isn't a fix delay between the time of the maximum lightning activity and the time of the maximum wind speed which can be globally used for predictions of the...