Funded by the National Science Foundation (Water Cycle Program), with joint support by the Hellenic General Secretariat for Research and Development, Univeristy of Nevada, State University of Ceara, University of Sao Paulo and Companhia de Energia Eletrica do Estado do Ceara, we have deployed and operating an experimental long-range lightning detection system (Zeus) in Africa, Europe and Americas. 

The system, built by Resolution Displays, Inc., consists of a network of thirteen Very Low Frequency (7-15 kHz) radio receivers (named “sferics”) spread over the European and African continents.  Sferics is the radio noise emitted by lightning over a broad region of the electromagnetic spectrum, which in the VLF band can propagate over thousands of kilometers in the earth-ionosphere wave-guide.  The European receivers are situated in Birmingham (UK), Roskilde (Denmark), Iasi (Romania), Larnaka (Cyprus), and Evora (Portugal), and the African receivers are in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Bethlehem (South Africa), Osun state (Nigeria), Dakar (Senegal), Guadeloupe, Fortaleza (Brazil) and Sao Paulo (Brazil) . 

The European and African network deployments were completed in the summers of 2001 and 2003, respectively.  The American network was established in June of 2006. Since then lightning activity occurring over a large part of the globe is being continuously monitored at varying spatial accuracy (e.g. 10-20 km within and >50 km outside the network periphery) and high temporal (1 msec) resolution. This unprecedented dataset on convection presents a unique opportunity to advance water cycle research in the most active regions of earth (Africa, Amazon and ITCZ).  The availability of continuous information on lightning activity over such an extensive area would further support real-time applications in hydrology/water resources (improve high-frequency satellite rainfall estimation), meteorology (improve quantitative forecasting of convective storms through continuous lightning data assimilation), and aviation safety (predict regions of strong vertical motion in a cloud that an aircraft should avoid).