Lightning Climatology 

This map of average annual lightning strikes comes from data acquired by the Optical Transient Detector on the OrbView-1 satellite (1995) and the Lightning Image Sensor on the TRMM satellite (1997). 

The most striking feature of the global lightning map is that lightning primarily occurs over land areas, with about 90% over land and only 10% over the world’s oceans. This is due to the differing characteristics of thunderstorms and their environment that occur over the two surfaces, with thunderstorms over land being more conducive to lightning development. 

The annually averaged global flash rate is 44 flashes per second. 

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