McCain also released a television ad Monday in Oregon that connects climate change to increased destructive weather phenomena like hurricanes.

CNN: McCain: Clean energy a 'national security issue'

One theory is that global warming, caused by air pollution, is at least partly responsible for the increased intensity of weather phenomena.

CNN: NATURE'S WRATH

But while of particular interest to the electrical storm specialists at Cardiff University, lightning is just one of the many extreme weather phenomena encountered by planes when in the air.

CNN: SHARE THIS

In a project within the International Polar Year called Igliniit, Inuit hunters recorded their observations of wildlife, sea ice, weather or other environmental phenomena as they travelled across the land.

UNESCO: Weathering uncertainty in the Arctic

He ends his book with a blast of cartographical analysis, and suggests that weather maps have created the template for other representations of volatile geographic phenomena such as the incidence of crime and disease.

ECONOMIST: Weather maps