This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Environmental factors controlling thunderstorm updraft speed, including instability and height of cloud-base, may prevail in determining much of the pattern in global occurrence of lightning. Nevertheless, additional influences from aerosol are likely. The goal of this 3-year project is to evaluate the influence of convective instability, height of cloud-base, vertical shear of the wind, and aerosols, on the lightning produced by a single continental cumulonimbus cloud observed in the Severe Thunderstorm Electrification and Precipitation Study (STEPS). An already-developed 3D cloud-resolving model will be extended to include an electrification component for use in simulating this storm. Observational data from STEPS will validate the model's predictions of cloud properties and lightning for the simulated cloud. Responses of storm electrification to variation in these environmental factors will be analyzed by simulating this single cloud multiple times with varying environmental conditions.
Improved understanding of the physics of convective storms will help the scientific community to better model and forecast storms. In the future, remote monitoring of lightning will be an ever more useful source of information for inferring convective intensity, precipitation, hail, and climate change. Codes developed will be made available to the community of users of the Weather, Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and to researchers at other institutions. Broad dissemination of results will benefit the wider educational community. Outreach to community colleges and public institutions (e.g. libraries) in Hawaii will include public talks. Highlights from the research will be outlined on a web-page, and included in lectures by the PI at the University of Hawaii, benefitting students. This project will provide training in cloud physics for a post-doctoral scientist and facilitate entry into a scientific career.
