Thunderstorm climatology in the Mediterranean using cloud-to-ground lightning observations

Galanaki, Elissavet; Lagouvardos, Konstantinos; Kotroni, Vassiliki; Flaounas, Emmanouil; Argiriou, Athanassios A.

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2018.03.004

Cited by 42 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…This is a typical unstable situation favorable to convection processes, where air with low temperature is above air with high temperature. Other research on convective rain events show similar results for other locations [53][54][55][56]. As expected, the convective events also exhibit a seasonal periodicity (Figure 7).…”

Section: Temporal Focussupporting

confidence: 83%

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Intense Convective Storms Tracks in a Densely Urbanized Italian Basin

Sangiorgio

Barindelli

2020

IJGI

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Intense convective storms usually produce large rainfall volumes in short time periods, increasing the risk of floods and causing damages to population, buildings, and infrastructures. In this paper, we propose a framework to couple visual and statistical analyses of convective thunderstorms at the basin scale, considering both the spatial and temporal dimensions of the process. The dataset analyzed in this paper contains intense convective events that occurred in seven years (2012–2018) in the Seveso-Olona-Lambro basin (North of Italy). The data has been acquired by MeteoSwiss using the Thunderstorm Radar Tracking (TRT) algorithm. The results show that the most favorable conditions for the formation of convective events occur in the early afternoon and during summertime, confirming the key role of the temperature in atmospheric convection. The orography emerged as a driver for convection, which takes place more frequently in mountain areas. The storm paths analysis shows that the predominant direction is from South-West to North-East. Considering storm duration, long-lasting events reach higher values of radar reflectivity and cover more extended areas than short-lasting ones. The results obtained can be exploited for many practical applications including nowcasting, alert systems, and sensors deployment.

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Section: Temporal Focussupporting

confidence: 83%

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Intense Convective Storms Tracks in a Densely Urbanized Italian Basin

Sangiorgio

Barindelli

2020

IJGI

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“…Once an appropriate grid size is identified, flash density can be calculated per square kilometre per year for each grid box. Temporal and spatial variations in lightning flash density are then analysed and can include investigations of the impact of potential influencing factors such as topographic features, land use, CAPE (Galanaki et al, 2015), synoptic conditions (Gatidis et al, 2018) and aerosols (Coquillat et al, 2013).…”

Section: Lightning Flash Density Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…other approach is to calculate average daily values of relevant reanalysis variables such as 500 and 1000 hPa geopotential heights, 500 hPa air temperature and the instability index known as CAPE (convective available potential energy) for a given temporal resolution (Gatidis et al, 2018). Reanalyses can also be used to obtain a longer climatology of thunderstorms by developing indices as proxies of thunderstorm activity (Kaltenböck et al, 2009;Kunz, 2007).…”

Section: Lightning Remote Sensing: Satellite and Ground-basedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review article: A comprehensive review of datasets and methodologies employed to produce thunderstorm climatologies

Hayward

Whitworth

Pepin

et al. 2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Thunderstorm and lightning climatological research is conducted with a view to increasing knowledge about the distribution of thunderstorm-related hazards and to gain an understanding of environmental factors increasing or decreasing their frequency. There are three main methodologies used in the construction of thunderstorm climatologies: thunderstorm frequency, thunderstorm tracking or lightning flash density. These approaches utilise a wide variety of underpinning datasets and employ many different methods ranging from correlations with potential influencing factors and mapping the distribution of thunderstorm day frequencies to tracking individual thunderstorm cell movements. Meanwhile, lightning flash density climatologies are produced using lightning data alone, and these studies therefore follow a more standardised format. Whilst lightning flash density climatologies are primarily concerned with the occurrence of cloud-to-ground lightning, the occurrence of any form of lightning confirms the presence of a thunderstorm and can therefore be used in the compilation of a thunderstorm climatology. Regardless of approach, the choice of analysis method is heavily influenced by the coverage and quality (detection efficiency and location accuracy) of available datasets as well as by the controlling factors which are under investigation. The issues investigated must also reflect the needs of the end-use application to ensure that the results can be used effectively to reduce exposure to hazard, improve forecasting or enhance climatological understanding.

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“…The electric field of region 1 was generated by charge q and the image charge 0 q of region 0, and the distance of the image charge 0 q from the observation point A was also 0 R . The potentials at any point above the surface ( 0 z > ) and inside the earth ( 0 z < ) are shown in Equations (6) and 7, respectively:…”

Section: The Relationship Between a Three-dimensional Atmospheric Elementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the short flying time of the sounding balloon, the measured electric field is the instantaneous charge structure of the thunderstorm cloud, so it is difficult to realize continuous monitoring. In recent years, scholars have used numerical simulation methods combined with the micro-dynamic factors of cloud physics to simulate the charge structure characteristics during the development of thunderstorm clouds [2][3][4][5][6]. However, most of these methods are simulations, and there is no physical quantity that combines actual observations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inversion of a Thunderstorm Cloud Charging Model Based on a 3D Atmospheric Electric Field

Zhang

et al. 2018

Applied Sciences

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The measurement of the atmospheric electric field is of great significance for the study of thunderstorm cloud charge models. Traditional electric field meters can only measure the vertical component of the atmospheric electric field, and thus it is difficult to invert the structure of the thunderstorm cloud. A three-dimensional atmospheric electric field meter was developed to simultaneously measure the horizontal and vertical components of the atmospheric electric field in this paper. The effective measurement linearly relates the measured electric field to the induced voltage, and the nonlinear equations of the three-dimensional atmospheric electric field and the thunderstorm cloud-charging model parameters were derived. The particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) and the three-dimensional atmospheric electric field were used to invert the thunderstorm clouds. Experimental observations of the three-dimensional electric field in a cloud during a thunderstorm were analyzed. Combined with the typical charged structure model, parameters such as the charge and relative distance of the thunderstorm cloud were determined. The results showed that the value of the inversion fitness function reached 0.7288, and the charge structure was even. The measurement of the three-dimensional atmospheric electric field provides a new means of observation for the study of atmospheric electricity.

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Thunderstorm climatology in the Mediterranean using cloud-to-ground lightning observations

Cited by 42 publications

References 51 publications

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Intense Convective Storms Tracks in a Densely Urbanized Italian Basin

Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Intense Convective Storms Tracks in a Densely Urbanized Italian Basin

Review article: A comprehensive review of datasets and methodologies employed to produce thunderstorm climatologies

Inversion of a Thunderstorm Cloud Charging Model Based on a 3D Atmospheric Electric Field

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