A line of dense convective clouds in the Pacific Ocean, south of Central America, produces lightning. The lightning is being picked up by the GOES Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM). The storm system sits about 500 km north of the Galapagos Islands and extends eastward to the coast of Colombia.

GLM, which is the first ever instrument aboard a GOES satellite that specifically locates and tracks lightning, detects brightness given off by clouds that can be seen from a satellite’s perspective. GLM can detect lightning both during day and night. In the animation above, a GLM product called the group density is shown. The density of lightning is depicted by orange and yellow squares. Group density can be thought of as the number of lightning flashes per given area. As seen in the animation, lightning density is spaced out across the entire storm system, including areas of high convection and overshooting tops, which can be identified by the false color Band 13 infrared channel.

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