Identification

Title

An evaluation of relationships between radar-inferred kinematic and microphysical parameters and lightning flash rates in Alabama storms

Abstract

Lightning flash rate parameterizations based on polarimetric and multi-Doppler radar inferred microphysical (e.g., graupel volume, graupel mass, 35 dBZ volume) and kinematic (e.g., updraft volume, maximum updraft velocity) parameters have important applications in atmospheric science. Although past studies have established relations between flash rate and storm parameters, their expected performance in a variety of storm and flash rate conditions is uncertain due to sample limitations. Radar network and lightning mapping array observations over Alabama of a large and diverse sample of 33 storms are input to hydrometeor identification, vertical velocity retrieval and flash rate algorithms to develop and test flash rate relations. When applied to this sample, prior flash rate linear relations result in larger errors overall, including often much larger bias (both over- and under-estimation) and root mean square errors compared to the new linear relations. At low flash rates, the new flash rate relations based on kinematic parameters have larger errors compared to those based on microphysical ones. Sensitivity of error to the functional form (e.g., zero or non-zero intercept) is also tested. When considering all factors (e.g., low errors including at low flash rate, consistency with past linear relations, and insensitivity to functional form), the flash rate parameterization based on graupel volume has the best overall performance.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77947wg

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-12-09T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact