Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) Annual Thunder Hour

This thunder hour dataset is based on lightning observations from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) that operated aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite from 1 January 1998 to 8 April 2015. The data are provided at 0.05° latitude/longitude resolution for latitudes between 37.75ºS and 37.75ºN. A thunder hour is defined as an hour during which thunder can be heard from a given location. Thunder hours represent a historical measure of lightning occurrence and a metric of thunderstorm frequency that is comparatively less sensitive to geographic variations in the detection capabilities of a lightning location system. Thunder hours are the average number of hours in a given year during which two or more LIS group centroids were observed within 15 km of each grid point. The TRMM LIS annual thunder hour dataset is available as a single netCDF-4 file.