Lightning Imaging Sensor Seasonal Climatology 1998-2013

LIS 0.1 Degree Very High Resolution Gridded Lightning Seasonal Climatology (VHRSC) provides seasonal climatologies of total lightning flash rates from the Lightning Imaging Sensor aboard the TRMM satellite. The dataset covers 16 years from January 1998 to December 2013, focusing on Earth's tropical and subtropical regions. It is produced and hosted by NASA's Global Hydrology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center (GHRC DAAC).

Use Cases

• Analyzing the mean diurnal cycle of lightning flash rates with 24-hour resolution.
• Studying the seasonal and annual variability of total lightning in tropical regions.
• Detecting and analyzing patterns associated with severe storms using gridded flash rate data.
• Investigating lightning-climate interactions using smoothed annual cycle data with 49-day and 1-degree moving averages.

Strengths

• Offers a 16-year continuous record from 1998 to 2013, providing a long-term baseline.
• Features a high 0.1-degree spatial resolution for detailed geographical analysis.
• Includes multiple temporal aggregations: annual mean, diurnal cycle, and annual cycle (daily, monthly, seasonal).

Limitations

• Platform sources disagree on the last updated date (2013-12-31 vs. 2026-03-13), indicating potential metadata inconsistency.
• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided by any source.
• Spatial coverage is limited to tropical and subtropical regions observed by the TRMM satellite.

Provenance

Source

Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite, processed by GHRC DAAC.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing detection of total lightning flashes, gridded into seasonal climatologies.

Time Range

1998-01-01 to 2013-12-31

Freshness

2026-03 13 01:09:17.519904

Geography

Earth's tropical and subtropical regions.