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Full catalog/lohrfc
lohrfc·v2.3.2015·dataset

Long-term map of where lightning strikes most

LIS/OTD 0.5 Degree High Resolution Full Climatology (HRFC) V2.3.2015
atmosphere NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 3 HDF4netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. A long-term map of how often lightning strikes around the world, given as flash rates on a half-degree grid.

How it's made. Combines years of lightning detections from two space sensors, the Optical Transient Detector on OrbView-1 and the Lightning Imaging Sensor on the TRMM satellite, merged into one climatology.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for understanding where thunderstorms are most common, for climate studies, and for fields like aviation and power-grid planning that care about lightning risk.

What's measured

Atmosphere › Atmospheric Electricity › LightningAtmosphere › Weather Events › Lightning

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1995-05-04 → 2014-12-31
  • Measured byOrbView-1 (OTD) · TRMM (LIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-179.75, -89.75, 179.75, 89.75
  • FormatsHDF4, netCDF-4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The LIS/OTD 0.5 Degree High Resolution Full Climatology (HRFC) contains a variety of gridded climatologies of total lightning flash rates obtained from two lightning detection sensors - the spaceborne Optical Transient Detector (OTD) on Orbview-1 and the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.The long LIS (equatorward of about 38 degree) record makes the merged climatology most robust in the tropics and subtropics, while the high latitude data is entirely from OTD. The HRFC dataset include flash rate climatology data including raw and scaled flash on a 0.5 degree grid in HDF and netCDF-4 format.

Get the data

lohrfc_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="lohrfc",
    version="2.3.2015",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from GHRC_DAAC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.