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放电和放电过程的理解，以及雷暴变得高度带电的过程。为此，已经开发了一种基于GPS的系统，用于在三维空间和时间上绘制闪电放电，称为闪电映射阵列或LMA。LMA的观测结果显示了风暴中闪电活动的总量，不仅对科学研究有价值，而且对气象应用也有价值，可以作为风暴对流强度和潜在严重性的指标。研究涉及闪电和风暴起电的科学研究，以及继续发展和改进用于气象和相关应用的闪电绘图观测。拟议研究的智力价值将主要来自科学调查，其主题包括进一步研究形成反极性电结构的风暴，研究在异常和正常极性风暴中发现的新的和不同的闪电类型（例如，反极性云内闪电、对流浪涌闪电和短时间高能放电）、闪电引发研究，以及利用闪电测绘观测研究风暴的电结构和结构随时间的演变。这项研究是与其他研究人员合作进行的，使用的是在大平原和新墨西哥州已经进行的实地活动的观测结果，并将扩大到包括高度详细的观察个人闪电放电从一个紧凑的网络紧密间隔的测绘站正在建立在朗缪尔实验室在新墨西哥州中部。闪电测绘技术作为一种有用的技术得到进一步发展，研究生和本科生继续参与科学和应用方面的研究，从而使拟议活动产生更广泛的影响。该研究小组使用的测绘网络已提供给美国宇航局在北方亚拉巴马和俄克拉荷马州和国家严重风暴实验室在中部俄克拉荷马州，并与第三个网络，正在成为业务在新墨西哥州的白色沙滩导弹靶场。美国宇航局的小组一直在向国家气象局提供实时闪电数据，用于临近预报应用，同样的情况也将发生在俄克拉荷马州和白色金沙网络的实时数据上。

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.