NASA has been working on expanding the functions that their satellites are capable of. When it comes to showing lightning bolts across the Earth, they have been using satellite technology that allows them to both see where lightning strikes, and see the overall patterns that occur all over Earth’s surface.
Where Lightning Strikes Across The Earth
Lightning bolts across the Earth, as seen at Geology.com, have been tracked by NASA since they sent out their Lightning Imaging Satellite back in 1998. As it was only meant to be in use for a few years–not for the past couple of decades as has been happening–NASA is rethinking what the best options are to track the where lightning strikes as they reach Earth.
One of the solutions they had found in the past was to add on a secondary tool to their existing satellite. This was known as the Optical Transient Detector and was capable of recording all of the lightning flashes that occurred at certain latitudes on the Earth’s surface.
International Space Station and TRMM
TRMM, or the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, was part of NASA’s original mission to track where lightning strikes as it happened in realtime on Earth. NASA has decided that in order to further improve upon its lightning tracking capabilities that it must use a new satellite. This new satellite will be sent to the International Space Station and will be able to continuously monitor the lightning bolts across the Earth. The hope is that NASA will obtain much more detailed data than it is receiving right now and have new insights into thunderstorms and different natural phenomena thanks to this technological advancement.
NASA and NOAA Work Together
Both of these great organizations, NASA and NOAA, have worked together in the past and it is to their advantage to do so again regarding this massive undertaking. NASA will be able to provide all of the data necessary for tracking lightning bolts across the Earth and then NOAA will be able to help understand what the data is and apply it to various understandings about how our Earth’s climates interact with each other and how they all work.
The idea is to understand how lightning works together with the different weather aspects such as precipitation, humidity, and overall temperature patterns in different locations across the globe. From what is currently understood, lightning is actually much more likely to strike Earth than it is to strike the water, and the amount of lightning bolts per storm varies on its location as well as the different climate aspects as seen previously.
There is much to learn about our Earth still when it comes to lightning strikes and the patterns of lightning bolts across the Earth, as seen at NASA’s Global Hydrology and Climate Center. However, with great satellite technology provided by NASA and the great weather and climate experts that NOAA can provide, there is a good chance that we will be able to better understand our Earth much better in the coming years.un
For more light play, check out this visual tale about an inspiring source of light, traveling all around the world:
https://youtu.be/pueSrtT1lEY
