Lightning Occurrence in Six Southeast African Countries

Information about the occurrence of lightning in Southeast Africa has been somewhat limited to date due to inadequate continental-scale coverage by ground-based and satellite sensors. Stroke data from the Global Lightning Dataset GLD360 network have been assembled for this region for the latest five years from 2013-2017. The data will not be corrected for detection efficiency at this time. Countries of interest are Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

To date, lightning data have not been portrayed by nation in most parts of Africa. The identification of the prevalent months for each country will be very helpful in assisting the understanding the lightning risk with respect to agriculture, school safety, utilities, and many other applications where such data information is currently lacking. For each nation, stroke density maps will be developed by season, and the time of day of lightning occurrence will be determined by season. Attention will be paid to the regional distribution of lightning relative to major mountains, lakes, and elevation changes. Point plots of select days with the largest stroke counts in each nation will also be shown. If possible, the movement of the lightning maximum by latitude will be depicted as the monthly maximum, and north and south boundaries of equatorial lightning travels through the year.