Land-Ocean Differences in LIS and OTD Tropical Lightning Observations

Abstract

Significant differences are known to exist on a global scale between continental and oceanic total lightning regional flash rates, suggesting differences in the properties of convective storms in these regimes. Lightning properties observed by the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) over land and ocean are compared, limited to analysis over the tropics in order to simplify physical interpretation. We find that the mean flash rates of individual storms over tropical land only exceed those over ocean by a factor of 2 (far less than the observed differences in regional flash rates). However, the average nearest neighbor distance of continental thunderstorms is half that over oceans. Cloud-top lightning optical radiance in oceanic storms is also twice as large as over land, suggesting either more energetic flashes over the oceans or less intervening cloud particles.