Lightning jump as a nowcast predictor: Application to severe weather events in Catalonia

Farnell, Carme; Rigo, Tomeu; Pineda, Nicolau

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2016.08.021

Cited by 58 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Similarly, strong environmental low-level shear is evident from the Launceston Airport profiler, a condition closely associated with other accounts of tornado occurrence (Hanstrum et al 2002, and references immediately above). The enhanced intensity of lightning over the central north of Tasmania and near Scottsdale, in particular, is also consistent with other documented cases of a "lightning jump" immediately prior to the occurrence of an increase in severity of thunderstorms (Williams et al 1999, Gatlin and Goodman 2010, Rudlosky and Fuelberg 2013, Farnell et al 2017.…”

Section: Figure 10supporting

confidence: 88%

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2018

JSHESS

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On 15 April 2009, the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at Scottsdale, in northeastern Tasmania, recorded a wind gust of 54 ms-1 (194 kmh-1) as an active squall line crossed the state. Investigation of the environment, instrumentation, and damage resulted in the conclusion that this was a genuine wind gust caused by a tornado passing very close to the anemometer. This was the first direct AWS observation of a tornado in Australia, and one of very few such observations in the world. In this report, we document the weather event which produced the tornado, briefly outline the synoptic situation leading to its occurrence, document additional background observations that provide context for the event, and discuss the nature of the observations made by the AWS and the method by which the wind gust observations were verified. The squall line was part of a cold front that crossed northern Tasmania on the morning of 15 April 2009. At 300 hPa, the orientation of the shortwave trough associated with the cold front changed from positively to strongly negatively tilted as it moved over central Victoria and Tasmania. The orientation of the trough and position of a jet streak within it suggested strong upper divergence and strong vertical motion. These contributed to thunderstorm development and resulted in very substantial vertical wind shear through the lower half of the troposphere, which in turn contributed to the organisation of the severe convection. Near the surface, low cloud base and strong vertical windshear in the lowest kilometre provided conditions conducive to tornado development.

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Section: Figure 10supporting

confidence: 88%

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2018

JSHESS

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“…Yet another confounding factor resides in how a lightning flash is defined. To date, almost all studies of lightning jumps (e.g., Chronis, Carey, et al, 2015;Curtis et al, 2018;Gatlin & Goodman, 2010;Schultz et al, 2009Schultz et al, , 2011Schultz et al, 2015;Schultz et al, 2017) have been conducted using LMAs, with a few other studies based on other VHF lightning mapping systems with high spatial resolution (e.g., Farnell et al, 2017). However, the difference in flash clustering algorithms between LMAs and other VHF mapping systems might introduce differences in lightning jumps, an issue worthy of future work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparisons of Lightning Rates and Properties From the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and GLD360 With GOES‐16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper and Advanced Baseline Imager Data

Murphy

Said

2020

JGR Atmospheres

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Flash‐level comparisons between the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM; primarily from GOES‐16), the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN), and the Global Lightning Dataset GLD360 have been done at quasi‐climatological scale and in smaller samples of both severe and nonsevere thunderstorms. A small sample of data from GOES‐17 has also been analyzed. These comparisons show that the total lightning detection efficiencies of the GLM instruments drop off within about 2,000 km of the edges of their fields of view, particularly over terrestrial areas. In severe storms, low detection efficiency by GLM is clearly associated with very high midaltitude reflectivity, consistent with the idea that large multiple scattering path lengths, together with absorption of the near‐infrared signals by water (in all of its phases), depresses the GLM detection efficiency. This effect appears to be coupled with additional factors, including time of day, flash energetics, and the incident angle at the GLM sensor. The “lightning jump,” the sought‐after signature of severe storms in lightning observations, tends to be poorly correlated between NLDN and GLM unless the storms are fairly isolated, not close to the edge of the GLM field of view, and have moderate midaltitude reflectivity.

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“…1); the Pyrenees to the north at an altitude over 3,000 m; the Central Depression to the west and the Littoral and Pre-Littoral ranges to the east. Convective activity mainly takes place during summer and autumn (Farnell et al, 2017;Rigo and Llasat, 2016;Rigo and Pineda, 2016;Cortès et al, 2017) and, as explained in the introduction section, a high amount of these thunderstorms present anomalous motion during their life cycle, such splitting, merging or stationarity (del Moral et al, 2017;Pascual 2005). …”

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confidence: 99%