As climate change intensifies wildfire seasons, lightning is emerging as a major driver of catastrophic burns, as seen in Canada in 2023 when nearly 7,000 fires scorched tens of millions of acres, generated nearly 500 millions tons of carbon emissions, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. Lightning sparked almost 60% of the wildfires, and those blazes accounted for 93% of the total area burned. Against this backdrop, Vancouver-based startup Skyward Wildfire claims it can prevent many lightning strikes that ignite wildfires by modifying storms, positioning its approach as a high-leverage climate and fire mitigation tool.
Skyward initially advertised technology capable of preventing “up to 100% of lightning strikes,” but removed the claim after scrutiny, acknowledging that “in complex atmospheric systems, consistent 100% outcomes are not realistic.” The company now says it can prevent the majority of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in targeted storm cells and is working with wildfire agencies in Alberta and British Columbia. Public and leaked documents indicate that Skyward uses an inert substance consisting of aluminum covered glass fibers, a form of metallic chaff already used by the military to disrupt radar, and that its operations rely heavily on artificial intelligence to forecast lightning storms, prioritize treatments, target storm cells, and optimize aircraft and drone flight paths. A World Bank document states that Skyward partnered with Alberta Wildfire in August of 2024 to “prove suppression by plane and drone,” reporting a “60-100% reduction” in lightning compared with control cells, and that additional field trials are planned for the summer of 2025 to provide “landscape level solutions with more advanced aircraft, sensors and forecasting.”
Scientists note that midcentury US lightning suppression experiments using cloud seeding and chaff showed “generally promising” results but suffered from small sample sizes and methodological limitations, leaving effectiveness uncertain. More recent work tracking storms over Florida found that storms containing chaff were generally “smaller and shorter-lived,” yet total lightning flashes were higher, at 62,250 versus 24,492, leading the authors to conclude “it is hard to draw any conclusion about lightning suppression using chaff.” Experts say large chaff concentrations may be needed and question how much material Skyward must release, how long it persists, and how performance varies under different weather and climate conditions. Environmental investigations by the US military have generally found chaff to be widely dispersing and “generally nontoxic,” but a US Government Accountability Office report flagged potential impacts on radar, weather forecasts, and water reservoirs. Canadian environmental advocates stress the need for transparency about materials, locations, ecological effects, and community consultation, warning of “unintended consequences” when intervening in complex weather systems. Skyward says it operates under applicable regulations, releases lower volumes and concentrations than defense uses, and limits deployments to the less than 0.1% of lightning activity associated with high wildfire risk, while investors and some researchers remain cautiously optimistic that effective lightning suppression could shift wildfire management from reactive suppression to proactive prevention.
