Spatio-temporal dimension of lightning flashes based on three-dimensional Lightning Mapping Array

López, Jesús A.; Pineda, Nicolau; Montanyà, Joan; Velde, Oscar van der; Fabró, Ferran; Romero, David A.

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.06.030

Cited by 33 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The flash size in winter thunderstorms seemed to be larger than in summer thunderstorms. In the studies mentioned above, López et al () obtained mean and median flash lengths in summer thunderstorms of 15.0 and 10.3 km, respectively. Yoshida et al () suggested that the median area of the convex hull of summer flashes around the Japanese Kanto region was approximately 26 km 2 (counted based on the given square root value).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Charge Regions Indicated by LMA Lightning Flashes in Hokuriku's Winter Thunderstorms

et al. 2019

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The charge distribution of some cells in three winter thunderstorms in the Hokuriku region of Japan is investigated based on Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) flash data. The vertical arrangements of charge regions involved in lightning discharges suggest diverse charge patterns, including quad‐polar, tripole, positive dipole, inverted dipole, and inverted tripole. The riming electrification between graupel and ice crystals or their aggregations are thought to be responsible for the electrification of most cells. The charging process between snow/aggregates and ice crystals may be responsible for some inverted charge structure that occurred above 0 °C isotherm and accompanied with weak radar echoes. Convection indicated by the vertical development of radar reflectivity appears crucial to shaping the diverse charge distribution patterns by determining which charging mechanisms occur and where; it also influences changes in height or even the disappearance of the charge regions. The charged cores are distributed from 0.7‐ to 5.3‐km heights and 2‐ to –31‐ °C temperatures, while the distances between adjacent charged cores with opposite polarities change between 0.2 and 3.4 km, with a mean of 1.3 km. The mean flash duration and horizontal distance are 425.0 ms and 19.8 km, respectively. The average height, temperature, and power of flash initiations are 2.8 km, −11.9 °C, and 15.6 dBW, respectively.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Charge Regions Indicated by LMA Lightning Flashes in Hokuriku's Winter Thunderstorms

et al. 2019

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“…Median values of the flash size parameters were 0.27 s for duration, 5.54 km for horizontal distance, 3.67 km for vertical distance, 9.67 km 2 for flash area, and 14.37 km 3 for flash volume, as shown in Table . For comparison, Brook and Kitagawa () documented a median flash duration of 0.5 s using the definition that the duration was the time interval between the first burst of pulse activity and the last detectable R‐ or K‐change pulse, and López et al () reported median (mean) flash durations of 0.35 (0.44) s in summer storms and 0.41 (0.45) s in winter storms with LMA flashes containing more than 50 sources. These values are larger than those found in this study.…”

Section: Statistics For Flash Size Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Flash size properties have attracted interest in recent years and typically comprise measures of spatial extension and maintenance that include flash duration, channel length, horizontal extent, and flash area, based on the observations of 3‐D lightning location systems or satellite‐based lightning imaging equipment (Beirle et al, ; Bruning & MacGorman, ; Lang et al, ; López et al, ; Peterson, Deierling, et al, ; Peterson & Liu, ; Peterson, Rudlosky, et al, ; Thomas et al, ; Zhang et al, ; Zhang et al, ; Zheng & MacGorman, ). Lang et al () reported the world's largest flash with a horizontal distance of 321 km measured on 20 June 2007 across parts of Oklahoma and the world's longest flash with a duration of 7.74 s measured on 30 August 2012 over parts of southern France.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Properties of Negative Initial Leaders and Lightning Flash Size in a Cluster of Supercells

2018

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Properties of negative initial leaders (NILs) and flash size in a cluster of supercells with generally inverted charge structure in Oklahoma on 10–11 May 2010 are examined, primarily using Lightning Mapping Array data. A method to identify NILs from Lightning Mapping Array source is proposed and helps to reveal the multiple NILs properties and their distributions. The NILs in the supercell cluster have smaller speed (median 3‐D displacement speed: 0.65 × 105 m/s), relative to the previous reports in normal thunderstorms. Furthermore, median NIL speeds initially decrease with increasing height but begin increasing above 12 km. The NILs tend to decelerate during the early stage. The parameters characterizing flash duration and spatial size are also investigated. It is found that they all follow lognormal distributions and the spatial flash size is relatively small on average (median horizontal distance: 5.54 km). Most flashes (83.18%) extend primarily in the horizontal direction. Flash area shows an inverse relationship with flash density at their fast changes during storm evolution. Although large flash initiation density (FID) generally occurs in regions with small flash size, the smallest flash size is nearly not collocated with large FID value. In the regions with large FID, average flash duration roughly increases with increasing FID, while average flash area changes little. We proposed that the pattern of charge pockets and variation of charge density dominated by the strong kinematics are responsible for some new findings about the properties of NIL and flash size in the supercell cluster.

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“…A comparison of the winter and summer flash length distributions in Spain has been performed by López et al . . They examined 3D location data estimated by the Ebro LMA in Spain and showed the flash length distributions for both winter (December–February) and summer (June–August).…”

Section: Statistical Comparison Of Winter Lightning To Summer Lightnimentioning

confidence: 99%

Three‐dimensional radio images of winter lightning in japan and characteristics of associated charge structure

Yoshida

Yoshikawa

Adachi

et al. 2018

IEEJ Transactions Elec Engng

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We conducted lightning observational campaigns using a three‐dimensional (3D) lightning mapper called the Broadband Observation network for Lightning and Thunderstorms (BOLT) and C‐band radar to further understand the distinct characteristics of winter lightning in the coastal area of the Sea of Japan. We succeeded in locating 3D intracloud (IC) flashes, cloud‐to‐ground (CG) flashes, and upward lightning during winter. The basic characteristics of winter lightning, such as leader speeds and charge structure associated with an IC discharge, are similar to summer lightning. A noticeable difference between the winter lightning and the summer lightning is that the altitudes of the source locations associated with winter lightning are substantially lower than those associated with summer lightning. We performed a statistical comparison of winter and summer lightning. This comparison shows that the BOLT source altitude distributions during winter and summer peak at 2.1 and 7.5 km, respectively. Conversely, the distributions of the BOLT temperatures, which are the temperatures corresponding to the BOLT source altitudes, during both winter and summer show similar trends and have large values near −10 °C. These results indicate that a similar charge separation process, likely a noninductive charging mechanism, primarily contributes to thunderstorm electrification during both winter and summer. We show that the horizontal extent of the winter flashes is substantially larger than that of the summer flashes. This result implies that the charge regions in winter thunderstorms cover a wide area and, therefore, produce CG flashes with large charge transfers. © 2018 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Spatio-temporal dimension of lightning flashes based on three-dimensional Lightning Mapping Array

Cited by 33 publications

References 62 publications

Charge Regions Indicated by LMA Lightning Flashes in Hokuriku's Winter Thunderstorms

Charge Regions Indicated by LMA Lightning Flashes in Hokuriku's Winter Thunderstorms

Properties of Negative Initial Leaders and Lightning Flash Size in a Cluster of Supercells

Three‐dimensional radio images of winter lightning in japan and characteristics of associated charge structure

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