Thunder is caused by a shockwave in air driven by the sudden thermal expansion of plasma in the lightning channel, with the Lorentz pinch force being too small and in the wrong direction to be the cause.

The cause of thunder

Thunder is caused by an air explosion driven by chemical bond energy from nitrogen and oxygen molecules, rather than thermal expansion of the lightning channel.

Evidence of thunder being a chemical explosion of air

Thunderstorms cause significant damage to humans, infrastructures, and plants, and increasing surface temperature may increase their occurrence in Africa.

The Mechanism of Thunderstorms and its Environmental Effects (A Review)

Thunder and lightning are created by lightning, with the separation of charges occurring due to the freezing of water into ice crystals.

Thunder and Lightning

Lightning is caused by electrical discharges in the atmosphere, which can cause damage to buildings and cause fear in humans.

Lightning, Electrostatic Discharge, and Buildings

Lightning is one of the most beautiful and terrifying, yet little understood, weather events on this planet. It is generated by the breakdown of electrical fields in thunderstorm systems, through discharges that can be cloud-to-cloud (CTC), cloud-to-air (CTA) or cloud-to-ground (CTG). The shock wave resulting from the rapid expansion of air heated in the discharge channel is heard as thunder. A comprehensive review of the processes involved is presented in the Royal Meteorological Society’s Scientific Statement on lightning (Royal Meteorological Society 1994). It is estimated that around the world every second there are more than 2000 active thunderstorms producing roughly 100 lightning flashes (Brookes Lightning are by

A lightning climatology for Europe and the UK, 1990–99

Thunderstorms can produce radiation without lightning, due to the close proximity of the radiation hemisphere to the ground.

Physics: Thunder but no lightning

Lightning can provide early warnings for severe weather, impact climate, and serve as a useful tool for tracking climate change in the future.

Lightning Applications in Weather and Climate Research

Advances in instrumentation, remote sensing, and rocket-triggered experiments are providing new insights into the physics of lightning, revealing new and interesting phenomena in our atmosphere.

The physics of lightning

Thunderstorms generate about twenty coulombs of electricity in five seconds, with the motive power behind this electrical machine being the wind, which blows up from below the cloud with tremendous force.

Thunderstorms and Lightning

A more precise gridded days of thunder dataset for the United Kingdom reveals a small reduction in average daily thunder events, with a north-south divide and a small increase in north-south trends.

A gridded 30‐year days of thunder climatology for the United Kingdom

Thunderstorms can cause severe damage, including heavy rains, winds, and sometimes tornadoes, and may exacerbate existing cardiac or respiratory diseases.

Thunder storm mortality: Issues of medicolegal concern

Lightning strikes near seismic stations can cause damage to recording equipment and ground motions, affecting seismic records.

Seismological Analysis of a Lightning Strike

The Chinese literati from traditional to modern times believed that thunder was the destructive force in thunderstorms, influenced by popular beliefs linking thunder to divine powers and indifference to empirical investigation.

The Interpretation of Thunder

Using recorded thunder signatures, we can successfully reconstruct the lightning channel geometry for cloud and ground flashes, with 2% and 3% errors in calculated coordinates.

Reconstruction of lightning channel geometry by localizing thunder sources

Current research on thunder and lightning is limited, but future experiments may improve understanding of propagation effects and enhance the study of thunder as a tool for testing theoretical models of lightning.

The propagation of thunder through the atmosphere

Ocean noise caused by lightning strokes can be detected, with short (1 ms) impulses of sound pressure from elementary segments of lightning, and very low frequency components in the thunder spectra.

Noise in the Ocean Caused by Lightning Strokes

Thunderclaps can significantly accelerate the growth of droplet sizes in rainclouds, significantly reducing the time required for gravitational coagulation to produce raindrops.

Raincloud conditioning by thunder

Thunder has a low Q spectrum with peak power observed at frequencies from 4 to 125 Hz, and the electrostatic mechanism may explain high-energy low-frequency peaks in cloud-to-ground and intracloud discharges.

On the power spectrum and mechanism of thunder

Some studies suggest thunder is caused by the rapid thermal expansion of air in the lightning channel, while other studies suggest it is driven by chemical bond energy from nitrogen and oxygen molecules; lightning is caused by electrical discharges in the atmosphere due to charge separation.