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Elvia H. Thompson
Headquarters, Washington            June 19, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-1696)

Rob Gutro
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-4044)

RELEASE: 03-202

NASA RESEARCH HELPS HIGHLIGHT LIGHTNING SAFETY AWARENESS 
WEEK 

     The arrival of summer brings increased chances of 
thunderstorms and dangerous lightning. NASA marks National 
Lightning Safety Awareness Week, June 22-29, by highlighting 
the unique contributions agency lightning research makes to 
climate studies, severe storm detection and prediction.

Lightning is dangerous, so improving our understanding of it 
and its role in weather and climate is important. NASA 
researchers at the National Space Science and Technology 
Center in Huntsville, Ala., created lightning maps that show 
where and how much lightning strikes worldwide. This data is 
important to climatologists, because lightning indicates the 
location of large storms that release latent heat; the "fuel 
supply" that helps drive the Earth's climate "engine." 

Steven Goodman, Dennis Boccippio, Richard Blakeslee, Hugh 
Christian, and William Koshak from NASA's Marshall Space 
Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., helped create a high-
resolution world map showing the frequency of lightning 
strikes. The lightning science team recently presented the 
animated lightning maps and 11 technical papers at the 12th 
International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity, 
Versailles, France.

Goodman said the global lightning maps are "animated maps of 
lightning activity worldwide, and have just been updated to 
include eight years of data." The maps are color coded to 
indicate concentrations of lightning strikes. Each frame 
represents average lightning activity on each day of the 
year. These data, compiled from space-based optical sensors, 
reveal the uneven distribution of worldwide lightning 
strikes, and the maps provide a unique look at climate 
information. They also show where lightning activity 
increased and decreased during the recent El Nino event. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 
National Weather Service's regional forecast offices in 
Alabama have been using NASA's North Alabama Lightning 
Mapping Array since November 2001. The data have helped to 
characterize thunderstorm initiation, identify weakening and 
strengthening storms by the change in the rate of flashes, 
and evaluate the trend of the flash rate to improve severe 
storm detection and lead-time. Understanding lightning has 
the potential to improve severe storm warning lead-time by 
up to 50 percent and decrease the false alarm rate for non-
tornado producing storms.

NASA's lightning research is also being applied to aviation 
safety. NASA technology is helping aviators avoid 
turbulence, over offshore areas, by using surface lightning 
measurements and combining them with satellite lightning 
data and other measurements.  

According to the National Weather Service, lightning kills 
an average of 73 people annually in the United States. 
Lightning kills more people than hurricanes or tornadoes. 
William Valine and Phillip Krider, two NASA-funded 
scientists from the University of Arizona, discovered 
lightning frequently strikes the ground in two or more 
places. This means the risk of being struck by lightning is 
45 percent higher than previously thought.

NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, which funds lightning 
research, is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an 
integrated system and applying Earth System Science to 
improve prediction of climate, weather and natural hazards 
using the unique vantage point of space.

For more information and lightning images see:

Marshall Space Flight Center World Lightning Maps:
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/NSSTC/news/photos/2002/ph
otosN02-001.html

New Marshall Space Flight Center Lightning Animations:
http://thunder.nsstc.nasa.gov/images/LISOTD_ClimTS_F_Anim.mo
v.

Lightning Really Does Strike More Than Twice: 
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0107lightning.html

National Weather Service Lightning Safety:
http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/

Kennedy Space Center Lightning and the Space Program:
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/nasafact/lightnin.htm

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