False Transient Filtering Algorithm Test Report

Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) is being created through cooperation between EUMETSAT and ESA to ensure continuity of high-resolution meteorological data to beyond 2037. The MTG-I imaging satellites will carry the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) and the Lightning Imager (LI). The Lightning Imager will offer improvements for nowcasting by delivering information on total lightning (Intra Cloud (IC) and Cloud to Ground (CG)). The instrument will bring full hemispheric near real-time total lightning detection capabilities. The benefit of the LI mission is that it will continuously and simultaneously observe total lightning over the hemisphere, providing the information to the users with an extremely high timeliness. The LI mission will be able to detect, monitor, track and extrapolate, in time, the development of active convective areas and storm life cycles -- critical for nowcasting and very short range forecasting of severe weather events. A false transient (FT) is defined as a LI triggered event occurring in the absence of a lightning optical pulse. This report describes the tests conducted to assess the effectiveness of the routines devoted to filter the false transients at l1B level. These routines are described in the "False Transient Filtering Algorithm Design Document" issue 4 (July 2016). Regarding the test report, first it introduces the theoretical framework adopted to do the tests; after it presents each specific test. In the annex, it reports the MATLAB® source code adopted.