South camera – full field of view
This Lightning Imager’s south camera observes the southern Atlantic Ocean, with the southernmost part of Africa visible in the bottom right. Much less lightning is visible in this animation than was observed by the instrument’s three other cameras because most of the field of view is ocean, whereas most lightning occurs over land, and it is the Southern Hemisphere’s winter while lightning mostly occurs during the warm season.
The animation is mostly dark as the winter days are short. The small amount of lightning visible is mostly found in the rotating cloud spirals of mid-latitude cyclones, where warm tropical and cool polar air masses meet.
This animation was made using five days’ worth of data from the Meteosat Third Generation Lightning Imager’s south camera, from 00:00 UTC 2 June to 23:59 UTC 6 June 2023. It was made from raw preliminary data and is not for operational use.
