A new study predicted that lightning strikes in the United States will increase by 50 percent due to the global effects of climate change, according to BBC.
The study was authored by David Romps, a scientist at University of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report was published in Science on Nov. 14.
According to Romps, warming temperatures translate to more water vapors in the atmosphere. This then leads to an increase in electrical discharges, or lightning strikes, from the atmosphere to the ground, EarthSky reported.
"With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive," Romps explained. "This has to do with water vapor, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere."
"Warming causes there to be more water vapor in the atmosphere, and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time," he added.
Romps and his colleagues were able to come up with their findings by inputting lighting strikes data from 2011 into a computer model designed to predict climate conditions.
They discovered that the rising temperature leads to an increase in precipitation and cloud buoyancy.
"Lightning is caused by charge separation within clouds, and to maximize charge separation, you have to loft more water vapor and heavy ice particles into the atmosphere," Romps said.
"We already know that the faster the updrafts, the more lightning, and the more precipitation, the more lightning," he continued.
The scientists warned that the increase in lightning frequency means more human casualties.
Based on data from the National Weather Service, an average of 50 people a year a die due to lightning strikes while hundreds are left injured. This figure can easily double if the country's 20 million lightning strikes a year rise to 30 million, according to USA Today.
In addition, more lightning strikes will also lead to a spike in the number of wildfire cases. The U.S. Department of Interior's National Park Service has listed lightning strikes as one of the top causes of forest fires in the country.
