New Publication on Understanding how Lightning Clusters in Space and Time

Research involving Durham University’s Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR) explores patterns of lightning within moving thunderstorms.

The work was led by Dr Uldis Zandovskis as part of his PhD in Geography at King’s College London, supervised by Prof Bruce D. Malamud, Director of IHRR, and Dr Davide Pigoli, a statistician at King's College London.

Using Met Office data, the team examined more than 32,000 recorded lightning strokes from six UK thunderstorms in 2012 and 2015. Several strokes can occur within a single lightning flash.

By considering location and timing together, the researchers characterised storm movement, the intervals between strokes and their spread around each storm’s path.

These observations informed a statistical model that generates simulated lightning datasets. Such datasets offer a controlled setting for testing methods that identify clusters in space and time.

Uldis’s doctoral research was supported through CANES—the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Non-Equilibrium Systems at King’s College London. The programme brings together researchers across disciplines through training in mathematical modelling, simulation and data analysis.

The open-access paper is published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

Links

Read the research paper

Find out about CANES

Photos

Lightning_patterns_Figure1.jpg

Photo credit

Uldis Zandovskis, Davide Pigoli and Bruce D. Malamud, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Lightning data: Met Office. Background maps: © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Photo caption

Lightning activity on 28 June 2012 (left) and 1 July 2015 (right). Colours indicate when strokes occurred.