Identification

Title

Lightning NO x in the 29–30 May 2012 Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) severe storm and its downwind chemical consequences

Abstract

A cloud-resolved storm and chemistry simulation of a severe convective system in Oklahoma constrained by anvil aircraft observations of NOx was used to estimate the mean production of NOx per flash in this storm. An upward ice flux scheme was used to parameterize flash rates in the model. Model lightning was also constrained by observed lightning flash types and the altitude distribution of flash channel segments. The best estimate of mean NOx production by lightning in this storm was 80-110 mol per flash, which is smaller than many other literature estimates. This result is likely due to the storm having been a high flash rate event in which flash extents were relatively small. Over the evolution of this storm a moderate negative correlation was found between the total flash rate and flash extent and energy per flash. A longer-term simulation at 36-km horizontal resolution with parameterized convection was used to simulate the downwind transport and chemistry of the anvil outflow from the same storm. Convective transport of low-ozone air from the boundary layer decreased ozone in the anvil outflow by up to 20-40 ppbv compared with the initial conditions, which contained stratospheric influence. Photochemical ozone production in the lightning-NOx enhanced convective plume proceeded at a rate of 10-11 ppbv per day in the 9-11 km outflow layer over the 24-hr period of downwind transport to the Southern Appalachians. Photochemical production plays a large role in the restoration of upper tropospheric ozone following deep convection.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7rx9h8g

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

2024-06-01T00:00:00Z

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