Lightning:
2 Questions

by Bloce Kaibob

NASA recently released the map above showing the frequency of lightning strikes per year. The color code indicates the number of strikes per square kilometer.

Thinking about the distribution, I found two questions recurring, one which no doubt has some fairly straightforward meteorological answer, the other much wilder and thus much more interesting:

1. The straightforward question is: Why so much red in Africa, South America, and the southern United States and why no red at all in Europe?

2. The wilder question: Is it only coincidence that by far the greatest concentration of lightning strikes occurs in the very place on the planet where homo sapiens appeared?

END

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