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Abstract
Within the Charlotte, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia, megaregion (Charlanta), the Atlanta metropolitan area has been shown to augment proximal cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning occurrence through a variety of hypothesized mechanisms. Although numerous studies have investigated this urban lightning effect (ULE), there is currently a knowledge gap regarding patterns of urban flash enhancement at the scale of the entire Charlanta megaregion. Moreover, no urban lightning study to date has analyzed total lightning (TL) observations from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) aboard GOES-16. Filling these areas of need, a novel climatological synthesis of urban CG and TL flash modification across Charlanta was constructed using data collected by the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network and the GLM. Specifically, this research investigated spatial distributions of CG and TL around Atlanta, GA, Greenville, SC, and Charlotte, NC, during the warm seasons of 2007–2021. Augmentation of lightning intensity and frequency was apparent over and downwind of the larger cities in both forms of detection data, with a diminished urban signal over the smaller city of Greenville.