Recent Insights and Advances in Lightning and Other Thunderstorm-Related Transient Events

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Upper Atmosphere".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 November 2025 | Viewed by 398

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Italian Space Agency (ASI), I-00133 Rome, Italy
Interests: gamma-ray bursts; lightning; solar flares; remote sensing; terrestrial gamma-ray flashes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to invite submissions to this Special Issue on “Recent Insights and Advances in Lightning and Other Thunderstorm-Related Transient Events”.

It is well established that Earth’s atmosphere is an electrically dynamic and ever-changing environment. Lightning discharges in thunderstorms, resulting from charge separation processes and the subsequent electrical breakdown in the atmosphere, which play a fundamental role in balancing the global atmospheric electrical circuit. In recent decades, many advances have been made in our understanding of the physics of lightning, but many open questions still remain unanswered, especially regarding its initiation mechanism and its effects on the surrounding environment.

Nonetheless, thunderstorms have also been pointed out as capable of producing other types of discharges and transient events involving different energetics and durations. These phenomena include sub-millisecond Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), minute-lasting gamma-ray glows, hour-lasting Thunderstorm Ground Enhancements (TGEs), occasional releases of energetic particles, and upper-atmospheric Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). Recent years have seen an increasing interest in the investigation of these events, with improvements in spaceborne, airborne, and ground-based instrumentation and advances in observation techniques.

The multidisciplinary study of lightning and its associated phenomena can help provide new insights into the behavior of atmospheric electricity, the production of high-energy radiation in extreme environments, and the complex interactions between lightning and the surrounding context.

This Special Issue focuses on collecting recent results and new reviews about the physics of lightning, atmospheric discharges, and other thunderstorm-related transient events, with particular reference to new insights and advances in detection systems and observational campaigns.

Dr. Alessandro Ursi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • lightning
  • lightning electromagnetics
  • global electric circuit
  • thunderstorms
  • thunderclouds
  • lightning leaders and return strokes
  • energetic radiation from lightning
  • upper-atmospheric electrical discharges
  • transient luminous events
  • terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Review

15 pages, 645 KiB  
Article
An Octant-Based Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Lightning Warning in High-Risk Industrial Areas
by Marcos Antonio Alves, Bruno Alberto Soares Oliveira, Douglas Batista da Silva Ferreira, Ana Paula Paes dos Santos, Osmar Pinto, Jr., Fernando Pimentel Silvestrow, Daniel Calvo and Eugenio Lopes Daher
Atmosphere 2025, 16(7), 798; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16070798 (registering DOI) - 30 Jun 2025
Abstract
Lightning strikes are a major hazard in tropical regions, especially in northern Brazil, where open-area industries such as mining are highly exposed. This study proposes an octant-based multi-objective optimization approach for spatial lightning alert systems, focusing on minimizing both false alarm rate (FAR) [...] Read more.
Lightning strikes are a major hazard in tropical regions, especially in northern Brazil, where open-area industries such as mining are highly exposed. This study proposes an octant-based multi-objective optimization approach for spatial lightning alert systems, focusing on minimizing both false alarm rate (FAR) and failure-to-warn (FTW). The method uses NSGA-III to optimize a configuration vector consisting of directional radii and alert thresholds, based solely on historical lightning location data. Experiments were conducted using four years of cloud-to-ground lightning data from a mining area in Pará, Brazil. Fifteen independent runs were executed, each with 96 individuals and up to 150 generations. The results showed a clear trade-off between FAR and FTW, with optimal solutions achieving up to 16% reduction in FAR and 50% reduction in FTW when compared to a quadrant-based baseline. The use of the hypervolume metric confirmed consistent convergence across runs. Sensitivity analysis revealed spatial patterns in optimal configurations, supporting the use of directional tuning. The proposed approach provides a flexible and interpretable model for risk-based alert strategies, compliant with safety regulations such as NBR 5419/2015 and NR-22. It offers a viable solution for automated alert generation in high-risk environments, especially where detailed meteorological data is unavailable. Full article

Review

Jump to: Research

17 pages, 889 KiB  
Review
An Audiovisual Introduction to Streamer Physics
by Christoph Köhn
Atmosphere 2025, 16(7), 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16070757 - 20 Jun 2025
Viewed by 134
Abstract
Streamers are small, thin plasma channels that form the precursors of hot lightning leaders and that are associated with phenomena such as transient luminous events or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. We provide an easily accessible audiovisual introduction for students and early researchers, serving as [...] Read more.
Streamers are small, thin plasma channels that form the precursors of hot lightning leaders and that are associated with phenomena such as transient luminous events or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. We provide an easily accessible audiovisual introduction for students and early researchers, serving as a supplement to traditional review papers. This overview contains an introduction to the collision-dominated motion of electrons in an ambient field and an ambient gas, including a discussion of cross-sections and friction force. Based on this, we will discuss electron avalanches before moving to streamers. Here, we will focus on the avalanche-to-streamer transition and present properties and different modeling approaches. Finally, we will discuss streamers in different gas mixtures as well as their relation to lightning and plasma chemistry. The viewer of the supplementary video will receive a first overview of streamer physics. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop