Three years of the Lightning Imaging Sensor onboard the International Space Station: Expanded Global Coverage and Enhanced Applications

Lang, Timothy J.; Blakeslee, Richard J.; Koshak, William J.; Buechler, Dennis E.; Gatlin, Patrick; Mach, Douglas M.; Stano, Geoffrey T.; Virts, Katrina S.; Walker, T. D.; Cecil, Daniel J.; Ellett, Will; Goodman, Steven J.; Harrison, Sherry; Hawkins, Donald Lamar; Heumesser, Matthias; Lin, Hong; Maskey, Manil; Schultz, Christopher J.; Stewart, M. F.; Bateman, Monte; Chanrion, Olivier; Christian, H. J.

doi:10.1002/essoar.10502896.2

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“…GLM is the first lightning sensor to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, but lightning detection from space has long existed (e.g., Cecil et al, 2014;Christian et al, 2003;Lyons & Williams, 1994;Mach et al, 2007;Orville & Spencer, 1979;Turman, 1977;Vonnegut et al, 1985). GLM builds on NASA's heritage of optical lightning detectors that also includes the Optical Transient Detector (OTD; Christian et al, 2003) and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS; Koshak et al, 2000) that were placed in Low Earth Orbit in the 1990s (and a second LIS was launched to the International Space Station in 2017; Blakeslee et al, 2014Blakeslee et al, , 2020. These instruments consist of Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) high-speed (500 frames per second) pixelated imaging arrays that detect rapid changes in cloud illumination caused by lightning in a narrow spectral band around the 777.4 neutral oxygen line triplet.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New World Meteorological Organization Certified Megaflash Lightning Extremes for Flash Distance (709 km) and Duration (16.73 s) Recorded From Space

Peterson

Lang

Bruning

et al. 2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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Identification and validation of atmospheric extremes are essential to monitoring climate change, to addressing engineering and safety concerns, and to promoting technological advancement. An international World Meteorological Organization evaluation committee has critically adjudicated and recommended acceptance of two lightning megaflash events (horizontal mesoscale lightning discharges of >100 km in length) as new global extremes using analysis of Geostationary Lightning Mapper data. The world's greatest extent for an individual lightning flash is a single flash that covered a horizontal distance of 709 ± 8 km (441 ± 5 mi) across parts of southern Brazil on 31 October 2018. The greatest duration for a single lightning flash is 16.730 ± 0.002 s from a flash that developed continuously over northern Argentina on 4 March 2019.

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