Overview

• Researchers estimate that lightning kills about 320 million trees worldwide each year.
• Lightning-induced tree death releases between 770 million and 1.09 billion tons of CO2 annually, rivaling emissions from plant losses in wildfires.
• Current climate conditions make tropical forests the primary hotspot for lightning mortality.
• Climate models forecast that increasing thunderstorm frequency will shift significant tree losses into mid and high latitude regions.
• By incorporating lightning mortality into carbon cycle assessments, the study fills a gap and shows it accounts for 2.1–2.9% of annual plant biomass death.