Geographical Distribution of Thundersnow Events and Their Properties From GPM Ku‐Band Radar

Abstract

Six‐years (2010–2015) of snow lightning characteristics and climatology, including seasonal, diurnal, and surface temperature distribution, are generated. The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) and the National Lightning Detection Network lightning observations are collocated with Modern‐Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Application (MERRA‐2) temperatures. Cold season lightning events are identified as lightning with the MERRA‐2 two‐meter surface temperature colder than 0 °C and then further classified as snow lightning or thundersnow, when the entire vertical temperature profile is below 2 °C, and as freezing rain lightning when there is a temperature warmer than 2 °C somewhere in the column above the freezing surface. The statistics of snow lightning events from WWLLN and National Lightning Detection Network are well matched and are consistent with the climatology of thundersnow days reported at ground‐based stations over the United States. Using 4 years of observations from the Global Precipitation Measuring Mission Ku band radar, 443 Thunder Snow Features (TSFs) are defined, having a contiguous area of nonzero near surface snow precipitation derived from the Ku band radar and MERRA‐2 data, along with collocated WWLLN lightning flashes. The majority (about 394) are found over high mountainous regions such the Himalayas, Tibet, the Andes, and the Zagros mountain regions. Low‐elevation TSFs (45) are observed over the continental and coastal regions. Though only a small number of TSFs are identified with 4 years of Global Precipitation Mission data, most TSFs have maximum radar reflectivity above 30 dBZ at temperature colder than −10 °C, which indicates the importance of the noninductive charging process in these events.

Comparative Assessment of Snowfall Retrieval From Microwave Humidity Sounders Using Machine Learning Methods

“…It is stated that MERRA‐2 precipitation shows higher biases especially over the Arctic region (Boisvert et al, 2018). MERRA‐2 surface temperatures could have up to 15% of false alarm rate when compared to the ground‐based observations, especially when the surface is near‐freezing temperatures (Adhikari & Liu, 2019a, 2019b). The use of more accurate auxiliary data may improve our analysis.…”

Lightning activity in northern Europe during a stormy winter: disruptions of weather patterns originating in global climate phenomena

“…Montanyà et al (2016) used data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN; Rodger et al, 2004) and provided world maps with winter lightning activity for the first time. Adhikari and Liu (2019) searched for thundersnow events in WWLLN data from 2010-2015 in regions with very low surface temperatures. A total of 90 % of snow lightning events were found to occur over high mountainous regions.…”

“…Slightly different combinations of parameters were used in different studies: the maximum inter-stroke distance was 10 km, while the maximum interstroke interval (ISI) was either 0.5 s (Rakov and Huffines, 2003;Schulz et al, 2005;Pédeboy, 2012) or 1 s (Cummins et al, 1998). A study of cold season lightning flashes using National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) data (Adhikari and Liu, 2019) shows that 55 % of flashes contain only one stroke, 20 % had a multiplicity of 2, and the remaining 25 % of flashes were composed of more than two strokes (cold season is defined by 2 m surface temperature lower than 0 • C, ISI = 1 s). About 16 % of flashes were positive, with a larger fraction of single-stroke flashes.…”

Investigating ground-based radar and spaceborne infrared radiometer synergy for lightning areal prediction in complex orography

“…Future satellite geostationary platforms, like the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), will have their own lightning detector, named the Lightning Imager (LI). Active microwave sensors from space were occasionally considered using the radar reflectivity observations from the precipitation radar (PR) (Nesbitt et al 2000) and dual precipitation radar (DPR) (Adhikari and Liu 2019), on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Global Precipitation Measurement mission, respectively. Passive microwave sensors were used as well.…”