Lightning research has come a long way in the past few decades. We now have a better understanding of why lightning occurs and where, what lightning patterns exist over the globe, and what lightning tells us about atmospheric convection. Scientists and engineers continue to study lightning using a variety of instruments, more types than available previously and some can simultaneously measure the same events to better determine instrument measurement characteristics and capabilities.

Lightning Micro Articles

Micro articles are concise and focused selections of information that allow users to quickly assess topics and locate the most useful or relevant associated data, information and tools. The GHRC Library includes four types of micro articles: specific weather events, phenomena, Earth observing instruments and summaries of scientific research publications referencing GHRC data. Each micro article includes pointers to related data, user resources and tools available from the GHRC archive.

Earth observing Instruments

Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS)

Summary of the LIS instrument, providing details of instrument operation, measurements, LIS data application areas and data parameter differences between ISS and TRMM platforms.

Optical Transient Detector (OTD)

Summary of the OTD instrument, including operation, measurement details, data application areas, and relationship to the LIS instrument.

Research Publications Using GHRC Data

Highlights from Cecil et. al.'s 'Gridded lightning climatology from TRMM-LIS and OTD: Dataset description' publication

Presentation of the highlights and key findings of Cecil et al.’s publication that utilized LIS/OTD data.

Highlights From Peterson et. al.'s 'The Properties of Optical Lightning Flashes and the Clouds They Illuminate' Publication

Summary and description of Peterson et al.’s publication utilizing TRMM LIS data available from the GHRC.

Lightning Data Recipes

Tutorials or step-by-step instructions have been developed by GHRC staff to help you learn to discover, visualize and use new data, information, software and techniques. These recipes cover a variety of datasets and processing languages/software.

Highlights Using ArcGIS to Convert LIS Very High Resolution Gridded Lightning Climatology NetCDF Data to GeoTIFF

This data recipe provides a tutorial on how to bring gridded netCDF lightning data into ArcMap and create a GeoTIFF file.