Rainfall, Not Heat or Methane, Controls Venezuela's Catatumbo Lightning, Data Shows

An AI agent analyzing public datasets investigated what causes Catatumbo lightning — the world's most active storm system, located over Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela — to switch on and off. Using 144 months of lightning stroke data, satellite rainfall records, and sea surface temperatures from 2010 to 2021, the analysis found rainfall to be the dominant driver, with a Spearman correlation of 0.88 between monthly rain and lightning activity. The January 2010 disappearance of the storm coincided with rainfall at less than half the climatological average, while its March 2010 return aligned with above-normal precipitation. Sea surface temperature showed no meaningful independent effect once seasonal cycles were removed, and the popular methane theory was contradicted by the finding that the storm peaks during wet seasons, not dry ones. The study acknowledges limitations including sparse early detection data and only two drought case studies, and references peer-reviewed work published in JGR Atmospheres and Science.