According to research published by the the journal Science, the amount of lightning strikes in the United States could increase by as much as 50 percent by the end of the century.
“For every two lightning strikes you had at the beginning of a century, we will have three at the end of the century,” said David Romps, lead author and a scientist at University of California, Berkeley, in an interview with The Guardian.
“What we don’t know is where those increases will occur in the future. It could be regions that get a lot of lightning strikes today will get even more in the future, or it could be that parts of the country that get very little lightning could get much in the future. We just don’t know at this point.”
Romps created graphic images depicting strikes in 2011 as a comparison point in their research.
