Over the past two decades, the GHCC Lightning Team has been involved in numerous field campaigns around the globe. By measuring the the electrical properties of thunderstorms, members of the GHCC Lightning Team have helped advance the field of Atmospheric Electricity while providing insight into key elements of the global hydrological cycle.

During the early and mid 1980s, many of the field measurements recorded by the GHCC Lightning Team were used to verify that optical signals produced during a lightning discharge are powerful enough to be viewed from space. These measurements led to the design and deployment of the Optical Transient Detector and the Lightning Imaging Sensor. From the late 1980s, many instruments have been used to provided airborne and ground based measurements of lightning activity to support field campaigns which were designed to investigate storm convection and precipitation in various climatological regimes. In the future, our involvement in field programs will include the validation of the data obtained by the space based lightning detection instruments, such as OTD and LIS.