Instrument designed to detect lightning releases first data
Lightning over Europe. Click for original movie.
The first data from the Lightning Imager launched in December 2022 on Europe’s Meteosat weather satellite has now been released, the images compiled into movies showing lightning activity across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and parts of South America.
While the animations are a first initial result from the Lightning Imager, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager is currently undergoing its commissioning phase during which the instruments are calibrated and the data is validated. Data from the Lightning Imager will be available for operational use in early-2024 at an increased sensitivity.
You can see all the movies here. The lightning is found almost exclusively over land. In fact, you can see the lightning in one storm vanish as the storm drifts out into the Mediterranean.
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Lightning over Europe. Click for original movie.
The first data from the Lightning Imager launched in December 2022 on Europe’s Meteosat weather satellite has now been released, the images compiled into movies showing lightning activity across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and parts of South America.
While the animations are a first initial result from the Lightning Imager, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager is currently undergoing its commissioning phase during which the instruments are calibrated and the data is validated. Data from the Lightning Imager will be available for operational use in early-2024 at an increased sensitivity.
You can see all the movies here. The lightning is found almost exclusively over land. In fact, you can see the lightning in one storm vanish as the storm drifts out into the Mediterranean.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Interesting that is dominates over land, I would imagine saltwater, as a good conductor, would see just as much lightning. So is it the conductivity of the land, the additional height of the land or something else?
Land heats up during the day causing convection which forms clouds, including cumulus that grows large enough to turn into thunderstorms.
I used to do this stuff for a living about 50 years ago as an aviation meteorologist.
On climate
https://phys.org/news/2023-07-role-sun-climate.html
….if the proposed solar records are used as TSA proxies and the climatic sensitivity to them is allowed to differ from the climatic sensitivity to radiative forcings, a much greater solar impact on climate change is found, along with a significantly reduced radiative effect. In this case, the ECS is found to be 0.9°C–1.8°C, with a mean of around 1.3°C. This means that anthropogenic warming is greatly overestimated.