Thunderstruck: what does the future hold for lightning?

Humans have always been awed by the power and beauty of lightning. How does the experience and understanding of it change in a warming world? In a rock shelter in Kakadu national park in the north of Australia is an image of a being the Bininj people call Namarrkon .

His flesh bleached away to reveal the bones beneath, he wears stone axes on his head, elbows and knees, and wields a great band of lightning that runs from his ankles up, over his head. Namarrkon’s journey from the Arafura Sea to the Arnhem Land escarpment helped shape the landscape, according to the dreamtime stories of the…