FLASHMAP: A new global gridded lightning dataset with high spatial and temporal resolution

Lightning plays a critical role in the Earth system by shaping biogeochemical cycles, while also posing significant natural hazards and serving as a key geophysical indicator for storm monitoring and wildfire early warning. However, existing publicly available global lightning datasets are often limited in either spatial or temporal resolution and do not distinguish between intra-cloud (IC) and cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning, restricting their applicability for many scientific studies. Here, we present a newly developed global gridded lightning dataset, the Flash Location Aggregation from Strokes into a High-resolution Multi-scale Analysis Product (FLASHMAP). FLASHMAP is derived from lightning observations provided by Vaisala’s Global Lightning Detection Network (GLD360) and currently covers the period from 2019 to 2024. A gridding framework is applied to convert point-based lightning stroke detections into multi-scale products at 0.1° hourly, 0.25° daily, and 0.5° monthly resolutions. FLASHMAP provides comprehensive lightning characteristics, including counts of IC and CG strokes and flashes, stroke location uncertainty and peak current, and flash multiplicity. FLASHMAP can report more total lightning strokes than existing global lightning products in most of the land regions. Comparisons with regional lightning detection networks in Alaska (USA), Spain, and New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (Australia) indicate that FLASHMAP reports comparable CG stroke counts while detecting fewer IC strokes. FLASHMAP is expected to advance interdisciplinary research on global and regional lightning climatology, lightning-ignited wildfires, thunderstorm identification, and ecosystem impacts.