Assessing the performance of the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) using Deep Convective Clouds

The stability of the LIS instrument is examined during a 13year period (1998-2010) by examining LIS background radiance observations of Deep Convective Clouds (DCCs) which are identified by their cold IR brightness temperature. Pixels in the LIS background image associated with DCCs are identified and analyzed during July and August of each year in the 13year period. The resulting LIS DCC radiances are found to be stable throughout the period, varying at most by 0.8% from the 13year mean July August value of 358.1Wsr-1 m-2 mu m-1. The DCC method in this study provides a good approach for evaluating the stability of the future GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM).