Has tropical lightning frequency responded to global climate change?
Walter A. Petersen, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL AL; and D. Buechler The Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) has been in low earth orbit for approximately 10 years. During this decade of lightning sampling, climate markers such as surface temperature, sea level temperature and tropospheric temperature have continued to indicate a general warming trend. Based on previous studies of intraseasonal, interseasonal, annual and interannual trends in lightning and/or lightning proxies, it is expected that net global or regional changes in any underlying control on convective intensity or frequency (e.g. temperature, or tropospheric temperature structure), should result in subsequent changes in lightning distribution and frequency. Given a decade of LIS sampling and a continually warming climate in the tropics, we ask the question: Has the behavior of global tropical and/or regional lightning flash frequency (one proxy for the charact
