Research data for "Discharge pathways and intermittent release of extreme lightning currents"

This dataset accompanies the manuscript “Discharge pathways and intermittent release of extreme lightning currents”. It contains processed research data on the discharge-stage and polarity dependence of extreme lightning currents, storm-level changes in extreme-return occurrence, and the temporal recurrence of extreme discharges. The data were derived from lightning-location observations and satellite tracking of warm-season thunderstorms in China during 2020–2023. The archive contains four CSV files providing current-threshold exceedance statistics, stage-specific extreme-return rate differences for 296 thunderstorms, associated distribution coordinates, and polarity-resolved event-pair excess estimates with 95% confidence intervals. Variable names and measurement units are provided in the column headings. These data support the quantitative analyses reported in the associated study.