Blitzortung.org Forum

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51681760

Anak Krakatau: Lightning frenzy points to scale of volcanic plume

So the question. Could these strikes be detected? Is their anything different about them? 

Given a map of volcanoes, could the system be used to detect eruptions and perhaps provide early warnings? 

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/volcano_table has lat long of some volcanos

Smithsonian has a list of current erruptions

https://volcano.si.edu/gvp_currenteruptions.cfm


You would expect any lightening to be pretty fixed, even if the wind is blowing. That rules out most moving weather systems.

One problem, being a mountain, they do tend to trigger cu nims anyway. 

Nick

Blitzortung can only detect lighting from cloud to ground (CG) or vice versa, which means that the lightning channel has to be roughly vertical. This is not the case for most of the discharges inside the eruption cloud, but for strong eruptions, like the Taal eruption, also a number of impressive CG lightning strokes was generated. Blitzortung recorded 9 of them.

I was thinking, is there a DB of all strikes, It shouldn't be hard to cross reference that against eruptions and see are lots that can be detected. For all example, all strikes within 5 km of a volcano, and no strikes around the same time 10 km or more away. That should filter out weather events such as fronts. It still doesn't deal with the mountain effect triggering local thunderstorms.

Yes, there is a data base of all strikes and such an analysis can be done, but it would be a lot of work, so it is only something for researchers interested in volcanic lightning.

As far as I know, only lightning that strikes from cloud to ground that can be detected. But I read an article where scientists are researching about detecting lightnings in eruptions. Research showed that lightning tends to peak at certain times when erupting. This can help to show how a volcano is behaving.