Lightning is the biggest natural disaster-linked killer in India: data
With the monsoon making a slow revival over several parts of India, except the northwest region, there is a rise in lightning-linked deaths. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ex gratia of ₹2 lakh each for the next of kin of those killed due to the lightning strikes in all the three States and ₹50,000 for the injured. Over the years, the Home Ministry’s statistics consistently cited lightning as the biggest natural disaster-linked killer in India. In 2019, an analysis by private weather company Skymet reported that five States accounted for half the lightning strikes in that year, led by Odisha with 9,37,462 strikes or about 16% of the cloud-to-ground strikes. Pawar, scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, stated that annual lightning deaths had risen nearly two and a half times from the late 1960s to 2019 and were directly linked to the climate crisis, that increased moisture over land due to warming.
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