The TRMM Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) dataset, version 5, was collected by the LIS instrument on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite used to detect the distribution and variability of total lightning occurring in the Earth’s tropical and subtropical regions. This data can be used for severe storm detection and analysis, as well as for lightning-atmosphere interaction studies. The LIS instrument makes measurements during both day and night with high detection efficiency. These data are available in both HDF-4 and netCDF-4 formats, with corresponding browse images in GIF format.