The invention relates to the field of positioning of thunder and lightning. Provided is a method using a mobile terminal to detect and cooperatively position lightning. The method comprises the following steps: S1. using a magnetometer of an intelligent device to collect thunder and lightning data at a given frequency (S1); S2. performing processing on the data collected by the magnetometer (S21, S22); and S3. performing time domain analysis (S31A) and frequency domain analysis (S31B) on divided frame data. The method using a mobile terminal to detect and cooperatively position lightning can obtain a precise lightning distance, and has high cost performance and a wide range of applications.