Association of pre-monsoon CG lightning activity and some surface pollutants in different Indian cities around the COVID-19 lockdown year 2020

In this paper, pre-monsoon (March – May) Cloud to Ground (CG) lightning activity over 6 mega cities (New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad) in India is analysed with concentrations of four surface pollutants namely particulate matters (PM 2.5 , PM 10 ), Sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) and Ozone for a period of 2018 to 2021 that includes the lockdown year 2020. Pollution greatly reduced with an enhancement of air quality in this year. Lightning data for the analysis is derived from the ground based lightning Network -Earth Networks Global Lightning Network (ENGLN). Among the mega cities, Kolkata faces most lightning whereas Mumbai receives the least. CG lightning flash counts significantly decrease in 2020 for Kolkata, Bengaluru, New Delhi and increase for Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai though the increase for the last two cities are very insignificant. This increase may be due to greater impact of meteorological factors on lightning than the pollutant concentrations. The lightning activity averaged over all the mega cities follows the trend of pollutant concentrations and average CG lightning flash counts go to minimum in the COVID-19 lockdown year 2020. Analysis also reveals that average seasonal CG lightning flash counts, average positive CG lightning flash counts and maximum peak CG currents show positive correlations with the concentration of all the four pollutants. The overall study shows that control of pollution may reduce the lightning activity in some lightning prone urban areas.