Electrification and Lightning in Convective and Mesoscale Precipitation

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This award will allow the research team an opportunity to expand on their investigations into atmospheric convection, cloud electrification, and lightning. The three main areas of work are (1) the statistical analysis of regional differences in storm structure and lightning and their potential relationships to environmental parameters and aerosols, (2) the relationship between mesoscale precipitation systems and transient luminous events (TLEs), and (3) the meteorology surrounding large impulse charge moment changes (iCMCs). In order to perform the statistical analyses required, the research group will use a recently developed algorithm that ingests and synthesizes radar, lightning, environmental, and aerosol data. The algorithm would be used with selected data sets to run basic statistical tests on different parameter populations in order to answer questions about the relationships of lightning with convective structure, the meteorological environment, and aerosols. For the second task, the group will analyze a number of case studies of TLE-producing events and compare them to prior case studies to address hypotheses relating to the production of TLEs in mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). They will focus on the stratiform charge layer, embedded convection in stratiform precipitation, and regional differences in MCS structure. For the third task, the researchers will study iCMCs, which are the products of the charge magnitude lowered to ground and the height above ground from which the charge is lowered, over the first 2 ms of a cloud-to-ground lightning strike. iCMCs can be measured by a recently developed instrument, and the researchers will use the observational data to place large iCMC observations in meteorological context to see what types of weather situations may produce these large charge moment changes.The intellectual merit of the work includes the improved understanding of the relationships between storm structure and lightning behavior, and the influence of the environment on convection and lightning. Both topics will be enhanced by a greater amount of data, larger geographic reach, and additional instrumentation available for this work. The research will also help to improve knowledge about the connections between MCSs and TLEs and determine what information iCMC events can tell us.The broader impacts of the research include the involvement of multiple graduate and undergraduate students and citizen scientists, widespread dissemination of results and data, and better understanding of high-impact convection and lightning.