Climatology of large peak current cloud-to-ground lightning flashes in southeastern Brazil

The goal of this article is to present the first climatology of large peak current cloud-to-ground (LPCCG) flashes in southeastern Brazil, in terms of flash density, percentage of positive LPCCG flashes, peak current, and diurnal distributions. The results are based on data provided by the Brazilian Lightning Detection Network (BrasilDat) from 1999 to 2006, and only flashes with peak currents >75 kA recorded during the months of December, January, February, and March (the approximate summer season in the Southern Hemisphere) were considered in order to compare with similar data obtained by Lyons et al. (1998) in the contiguous United States. The LPCCG data set, consisting of approximately 122,000 flashes, is currently the largest data set available for the tropical region. The LPCCG flashes represent about 3% of all flashes recorded during this period. All LPCCG distributions were obtained for both negative and positive flashes. The flash density distributions for negative and positive LPCCG flashes are different and furthermore differ from the flash density distributions for all negative and positive cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes. This suggests that the flash density distribution of CG flashes is peak current dependent. While the negative LPCCG flash density distribution has no significant dependence on any specific geographical or meteorological feature, the positive LPCCG flash density distribution and the distribution of the percentage of positive LPCCG flashes are closely related to the occurrence of mesoscale convective systems. The peak current and diurnal distributions of LPCCG flashes were found to be similar to those obtained in the contiguous United States.