| タイトル | The North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array: Recent Severe Storm Observations and Future Prospects |
| 著者（英） | Darden, C.; Burks, J.; Koshak, W.; Hall, J.; Christian, H.; McCaul, E.; Buechler, D.; Goodman, S. J.; Blakeslee, R.; Bailey, J. |
| 著者所属（英） | NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |
| 発行日 | 2004-01-01 |
| 言語 | eng |
| 内容記述 | The North Alabama Lightning Mapping Array became operational in November 2001 as a principal component of a severe weather test bed to infuse new science and technology into the short-term forecasting of severe and hazardous weather, principally within nearby National Weather Service forecast offices. Since the installation of the LMA, it has measured the total lightning activity of a large number of severe weather events, including three supercell tornado outbreaks, two supercell hailstorm events, and numerous microburst-producing storms and ordinary non-severe thunderstorms. The key components of evolving storm morphology examined are the time rate-of-change (temporal trending) of storm convective and precipitation characteristics that can be diagnosed in real-time using NEXRAD WSR-88D Doppler radar (echo growth and decay, precipitation structures and velocity features, outflow boundaries), LMA (total lightning flash rate and its trend) and National Lightning Detection Network (cloud-to- ground lightning, its polarity and trends). For example, in a transitional season supercell tornado outbreak, peak total flash rates for typical supercells in Tennessee reached 70-100/min, and increases in the total flash rate occurred during storm intensification as much as 20-25 min prior to at least some of the tornadoes. The most intense total flash rate measured during this outbreak (over 800 flashes/min) occurred in a storm in Alabama. In the case of a severe summertime pulse thunderstorm in North Alabama, the peak total flash rate reached 300/min, with a strong increase in total lightning evident some 9 min before damaging winds were observed at the surface. In this paper we provide a sampling of LMA observations and products during severe weather events to illustrate the capability of the system, and discuss the prospects for improving the short-term forecasting of convective weather using total lightning data. |
| NASA分類 | Meteorology and Climatology |
| 権利 | No Copyright |
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