Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border is known for its sandstone formations and vast desert views. Toby Dingle captured this lightning strike in September 2013. Click to see some amazing lightning photos from the past few years. 
In Antwerp, Belgium, Zachary Koulermos was woken up by a hailstorm in June. After the hail subsided, the rain brought an "amazing lightning storm," he said. He grabbed his camera and tripod as the clouds retreated. 
Storm chaser Stacy LeClair got this shot during a severe storm that swept through Apache Junction, Arizona, on July 7. "The Superstition Mountains are a favorite landmark in Arizona, and the church offered a unique background for showing how powerful nature can be," she said. 
Several severe thunderstorms came through the oceanfront city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, in June. Boris Basic, who snapped this photo, said the storms also brought hail and flash flooding. "It was intense experience," he said. 
The lightning's quick movement and the way it contrasted with the colors of the sunset caught Billy Ocker's eye in his photo from Florida's Sebastian Inlet on July 21. 
"I was really surprised I was able to capture a lightning strike like this," said Madeline Belt, who shot this photo off Biscayne Bay in Miami in June. The storm would later become Hurricane Arthur. 
When Seattle was pummeled with a severe electrical storm in August 2013, "all of us photographers stood and watched in amazement," said Tim Durkan. He took this photo from Kerry Park in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Shooting on a friend's balcony, David Sowa used a 15-second exposure on his Nikon and an Instagram filter to capture this image of lightning striking the Willis Tower in Chicago in July. 
Matthew Burke shot this dramatic lightning strike from his Manhattan apartment window in July 2012. "There was very strong rain and wind for about 15 minutes, at which point the rain cleared and the lightning show began," he said. 
This lightning storm decided to join in on the fireworks after a 2012 Fourth of July celebration in Wakefield, Massachusetts. "The rain was right where the storm cell was, so we weren't getting rained on. It was a lucky shot," said Joshua Cruse, who captured this photo. 
Phil McGrew kept his camera going for an hour and a half as a storm passed over San Francisco's Bay Bridge in April 2012. He shot this 20-second exposure through a rain-soaked window. "Lightning is rare here, but I always thought it (the bridge) would be a pretty good target for lightning," he said. 
Bill Vaughn and his wife were hoping to photograph the Perseid meteor shower from Red Rock, Arizona, in August 2012. "We didn't catch many meteors, but did see that wonderful storm," he said. "The natural light show was very pleasing." 
"'As the storm neared, the lightning intensified, lighting up the sky nearly once a second," said Jim Clouse, who witnessed lightning striking downtown Boston in June 2011. 
It's only an optical illusion, but lightning appears to be striking a lamppost in this June photo from Billy Ocker. "The storm was wicked strong," he remembered. 
Aspiring photographer Kevin Wolf captured a photo of a lightning storm in Washington in September 2012. He says he caught this photo by keeping the shutter of his camera open for 60 seconds.
- Warming means more water vapor in the air, says UC-Berkeley climate scientist
- Study using 11 climate models is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science
- Scientist David Romps: Lightning strikes will be 50% more common by century's end
- More lightning striking the ground means more people hit, more wildfires, he says
(CNN) -- Thanks to climate change, you'll be more likely to get struck by lightning as the years pass, scientists say. Make that 50% more likely for those who are around at the end of the century.
"With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive," says University of California Berkeley climate scientist David Romps.
He and his colleagues studied 11 climate models to arrive at their calculations, which they published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The logic is simple. More warmth equals more water vapor in the air, which is the fuel for thunderstorms. That equals more lightning and more of it zapping the ground. And people standing on it.
15 electrifying lightning photos
Greenhouse gas deal challenges 
Weather Channel's climate change feud The current odds of becoming a human lightning rod in one's lifetime come in at around 1 in 12,000, the National Weather Service roughly estimates. If Romps and his colleague are right, those odds would slim to 1 in 8,000 by the year 2100.
Certainly, many people are satisfied to live with that level of personal risk. But Romps offers for consideration that lightning strikes also spark half of all wildfires. And fires caused by lightning are harder to put out, he says.
While working up the long-term predictions, Romps and his colleagues came upon a useful way of predicting the frequency of lightning strikes in the here and now.
They found they could determine fluctuations in that frequency if they knew the amount of precipitation falling and the speed and occurrence of "convective clouds" rising high into the atmosphere.
Then they studied the 11 models on projected global temperature increases to predict how much these two factors should surge in the distant future, resulting in more lightning strikes if carbon dioxide emissions continue on their current path.
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