On average commercial aircraft are struck by lightning once every year. While aircraft are built to withstand the high currents, temperatures, and shock waves, such events put the public at risk, and there have been fatal accidents in the past due to lightning strikes. In addition, thunderstorms associated with lightning also produce strong turbulence, winds, hail and precipitation that also present a hazard to commercial flights. In addition, aviation has a large impact on the Earth's climate, due to amount of greenhouse gases emitted due to the burning of fossil fuels, together with the altitude of these emissions.

The Lightning Service of the NATO SPS Cube4EnvSec project combines global lightning data with global commercial aviation flight track data, to investigate the how civil aviation flight paths are impacted by thunderstorm activity. With our datacube analytics we will be able to investigate on an hourly basis the proximity of civil aircraft to thunderstorms, and the needed re-routing due to thunderstorms.