Lightning in the Tropics : From a Source of Fire to a Monitoring System of Climatic Changes

Most lightning on Earth occurs in the tropical region, mainly in the central portion of the African Continent, in the Amazon region in South America and in Indonesia. Despite this fact, no book about tropical lightning is currently available. There is also no book about the relation between global warming and tropical lightning. Although this relationship is not very well understood at the present time, it has been considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) community as extremely important in the study of global warming. The reason for this is that lightning can contribute through feedback mechanisms to global warming. The purpose of the present book is to review the current knowledge about lightning in the tropical region, trying to compare observations made at different times and places and with different techniques, and indicate how this knowledge can be used to investigate and predict future impacts of global warming on Earth.