New understanding of the spatiotemporal lightning activity over the Tibetan Plateau based on WWLLN data

<p>The submitted data are associated with the figures in the paper titled &quot;New understanding of the spatiotemporal lightning activity over the Tibetan Plateau based on WWLLN data&quot;. The following is the abstract of this paper.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>The spatiotemporal distribution of the lightning activity over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has been previously studied based on data from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) aboard the polar-orbit Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. In this study, using lightning data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), we reinvestigated the lightning activity over the TP and found that the geographic and seasonal lightning distributions suggested by the WWLLN are somewhat different from those obtained from the LIS. In particular, 1) while the LIS indicates strong lightning activity over the northeastern TP, the WWLLN indicates relatively weak lightning activity over the region; 2) the WWLLN indicates the existence of a center with relatively frequent lightning activity over the south-by-west TP, which is not indicated by the LIS; furthermore, 3) the WWLLN indicates the most frequent lightning in August and September, while the LIS suggests July and June. The black body temperature data from the Fengyun-2E geostationary satellite (as a proxy of deep convection), thunderstorm day data, and local cloud-to-ground lightning data strongly support the lightning spatiotemporal distribution patterns suggested by the WWLLN. The difference between the WWLLN and LIS data is attributed to their very different sample numbers and observation methods, and the situation that lightning tends to occur in the lower part of TP thunderstorms. Owing to the time-continuous nature, the WWLLN data were also used to obtain the ten-day distributions of lightning in space and time and the diurnal variation of lightning. This study may further elucidate our knowledge of the lightning activity over the TP.</p>