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Peer-reviewed

Analysis of South Atlantic Anomaly Influence on Low‐Earth Orbit Lightning Observations

A. Clark, Timothy J. Lang, Shing F. Fung, Douglas M. Mach, Dennis E. Buechler, Daniel J. Cecil

Earth and Space Science · 2025

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Summary

Abstract The low‐Earth orbit Optical Transient Detector (OTD) and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) instruments, spanning 1995–2023, have spatiotemporal patterns within their metadata that are consistent with the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). While the SAA had a known influence on these instruments, this study details new variability and impacts. A large volume of radiation‐triggered events can cause the First‐In First‐Out (FIFO) buffer overflow to occur, which temporarily “blinded” LIS and OTD. Patterns of FIFO and the instrument status flags displayed an evolving intensity and areal extent of SAA interference, affecting climatological view‐time records. The interference had a strong relationship to the sunspot number with Pearson correlation values of −0.50 and −0.48 ( p < 0.0001 for bot

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1029/2025ea004407
Catalogue ID
BFmoef2u5h-yp3tly
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