Lightning and Thunderstorm Studies

这项为期五年的研究计划是正在进行的研究的继续，旨在提高我们对闪电和放电过程的理解，以及雷暴变得高度带电的过程。为此，开发了一种基于GPS的系统，用于绘制三维空间维度和时间的闪电放电图，称为闪电映射阵列或LMA。LMA观测显示了风暴中的总闪电活动，作为对流强度和风暴潜在严重程度的指标，不仅对科学研究有价值，而且对气象应用也有价值。这项研究涉及闪电和风暴带电的科学研究，以及气象和相关应用闪电测绘观测的不断发展和进步。拟议研究的学术价值将主要来自科学调查，其中的主题包括进一步研究形成反极性电气结构的风暴，研究在异常极性和正常极性风暴中发现的新的和不同的闪电类型(例如，反极性星际闪电、对流涌浪闪电和短时高能放电)，闪电引发研究，以及利用闪电测绘观测来研究风暴的电子结构和结构随时间的演变。这项研究是与其他调查人员合作进行的，使用了已经在大平原和新墨西哥州进行的实地活动的观察结果，并将扩大到包括对新墨西哥州中部朗缪尔实验室正在建立的密集网络中的个别闪电发射的非常详细的观察。拟议活动的更广泛影响源于闪电测绘技术作为一项有用技术的进一步发展，以及研究生和本科生继续参与研究的科学和应用方面。研究小组与阿拉巴马州北部的NASA以及俄克拉何马州中部的俄克拉何马大学和国家严重风暴实验室合作的地图网络，以及新墨西哥州白沙导弹靶场正在投入使用的第三个网络。NASA小组一直在向国家气象局提供实时闪电数据，用于即时预报应用程序，俄克拉荷马州和白沙网络的实时数据也将如此。

The five-year program of studies is a continuation of ongoing research aimed at improving our understanding of lightning discharges and discharge processes, and of the processes by which thunderstorms become highly electrified. Toward this end, a GPS-based system has been developed for mapping lightning discharges in three spatial dimensions and time, called the Lightning Mapping Array or LMA. The LMA observations show the total lightning activity in a storm and have proven to be valuable not only for scientific studies but also for meteorological applications, as an indicator of the convective strength and potential severity of storms.The research involves both scientific studies of lightning and storm electrification, and continued development and advancement of the lightning mapping observations for meteorological and related applications. The intellectual merit of the proposed research will result primarily from the scientific investigations, topics of which include further studies of storms that develop inverted-polarity electrical structures, studies of the new and different lightning types that have been found both in anomalous- and normal-polarity storms (e.g., inverted-polarity intracloud flashes, convective surge lightning, and short-duration energetic discharges), lightning initiation studies, and the use of lightning mapping observations to study the electrical structure of storms and evolution of the structure with time. The research is conducted in collaboration with other investigators using observations from already conducted field campaigns both in the Great Plains and in New Mexico, and will be expanded to include highly-detailed observations of individual lightning discharges from a compact network of closely-spaced mapping stations being set up at Langmuir Laboratory in central New Mexico. Broader impacts of the proposed activity result from further development of the lightning mapping technique as a useful technology, and the continued involvement of graduate and undergraduate students both in the scientific and applied aspects of the research. The research team works with mapping networks that have been provided to NASA in northern Alabama and to the University of Oklahoma and National Severe Storms Laboratory in central Oklahoma, and with a third network that is becoming operational at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The NASA group has been supplying real-time lightning data to the National Weather Service for nowcasting applications, and the same will be done with real-time data from the Oklahoma and White Sands networks.