The Earth sees about 760 thunderstorms every hour. The figure, unveiled at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, is substantially lower than numbers that have been used for nearly a century. Scientists say the new research uses a global network of monitoring stations that detect the electromagnetic pulses produced by major bolts of lightning. It confirms that thunderstorms are mainly a tropical phenomenon – and the Congo basin is the global hotspot. Thunderstorms also track the passage of sunlight across the world, with sunny conditions producing greater convection in the air. The head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences department at Tel Aviv University in Israel, Colin Price said the monitoring stations might miss some bolts of lightning, but we think we are getting the big ones – and that's enough to tell you where the thunderstorms are. The first attempt to estimate thunderstorm numbers is thought to have been made by CEP Brooks in 1925. At that time, it was customary for weather stations to note days when thunderstorms occurred nearby. More recently, satellites have been deployed – but they do not see the whole world.