International Space Station (ISS) 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 International Space Station (ISS) from 1 March 2017 to 16 November 2023. The data are provided at 0.05° latitude/longitude resolution for latitudes between 54.75ºS and 54.75ºN. 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 represent the average number of hours per year during which two or more LIS group centroids were observed within 15 km of each grid point. The ISS LIS annual thunder hour dataset is available as a single netCDF-4 file.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated September 15, 2026, 02:30 (UTC)
Created June 2, 2026, 21:31 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 18397692-fe50-4e55-ae49-fb6756aba2ee
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/ISSLIS/ATH/DATA101
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-09-07T22:16:01Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA/MSFC/GHRC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash c643643bffd038c34286a8b69f0a9db7fa5edb1828b59b10f910b3206bc8c587
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 54.75, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -54.75, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180}]]
temporal 2017-03-01/2023-11-16
theme {"Earth Science"}