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Full catalog/lohrmc
lohrmc·v2.3.2015·dataset

Monthly lightning flash maps worldwide (LIS/OTD)

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

What it measures. Monthly maps of how often lightning flashes around the world, gridded at half-degree resolution, including month-by-month and seasonal averages.

How it's made. Built from two space-based lightning sensors, the Optical Transient Detector on OrbView-1 and the Lightning Imaging Sensor on the TRMM satellite, merged into a long-term climatology.

How & where you'd use it. Shows where and when lightning is most common across the globe, useful for studying storms, climate patterns and lightning risk. The tropics and subtropics are best covered.

What's measured

Atmosphere › Atmospheric Electricity › LightningAtmosphere › Weather Events › Lightning

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1995-05-04 → 2014-12-31
  • Measured byTRMM (LIS) · OrbView-1 (OTD)
  • 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 Monthly Climatology (HRMC) 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 HRMC dataset include monthly flash rate climatology and flash rate seasonal climatology data on a 0.5 degree grid in HDF and netCDF-4 format.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="lohrmc",
    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.