A Year of Global Lightning Deaths and Injuries

Abstract

In 2003, the author, with Dr. R. López, proposed an annual global toll of 24,000 lightning deaths. This estimate is based on multiplying 1) a fatality rate of six deaths per million people per year, times 2) four billion people living in lightning-vulnerable locations. Both numbers are subjective. Next, the present author published a journal article where data were compiled from publications for 23 countries with multiple-year fatality data from recent decades. For the current study, the 2016 publication is updated for 30 countries that indicate a recurring annual total of 3,806 lightning deaths per year. While this is an undercount since so many nations have no published lightning fatality totals, these are all known national studies for multiple recent years. The present study explores the value of summarizing one calendar year of lightning-related deaths and injuries using hourly online search results mainly from Google Alerts for the English word “Lightning.” A total of 505 incidents were found including 765 deaths and 560 injuries from 46 nations; half are from India. The dataset indicates a ratio of 1.4 deaths per injury. There is a bias toward incidents with multiple injuries and deaths, such that single-casualty events are greatly underreported. Most events (88%) are from the Northern Hemisphere (NH). NH events dominate all seasons except the Southern Hemisphere (SH) summer. Similarly, over Africa, NH events dominate all seasons except 88% of events are in the SH during its summer season. The time of year, hemisphere, and continent are also explored. While it is gratifying to find that seasons and locations of known 2021 reports match expectations, it is also frustrating to find so few casualties with this method. A very substantial effort is needed to determine the actual number of global lightning casualties.