Thundercloud assessment for the years 1990–2019 over the Baghdad airport station

Abstract Thunderstorms are a meteorological phenomenon caused by atmospheric instability. Temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, rain, and hail all abruptly vary during thunderstorms. In order to create statistical classifications of thundercloud frequencies in the city of Baghdad, this work assesses thunderclouds in terms of their structure, physical attributes, and accompanying atmospheric stability indicators. The Baghdad airport weather station and ERA-5 reanalysis data provided the data for the years 1990 to 2019. Following processing and calculation, the outcome reveals that 1994 had the highest yearly frequency of thunderstorms. According to the study, thunderstorm frequency is highest in the spring (58.56%). The TT and K indices were computed. The TT index category 51–52, which accounts for roughly 36.75% of all cases, is most frequently linked to thundercloud development. About 35.26% of all occurrences fall into the k-index category 26–30, which is most commonly linked to thundercloud production. Temperature, lifting condensation level (LCL), and equilibrium level (EL) are all moderately to significantly positively connected with one another, according to Pearson correlation analysis. However, the equilibrium level and thickness have been found to be strongly positively correlated with the convective accessible potential energy (CAPE).