Initiation Locations of Lightning Flashes in Two Florida Thunderstorms

Abstract:

In this presentation we investigate the initiation locations of all intracloud (IC) and cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning flashes in two small thunderstorms which occurred over NASA/Kennedy Space Center on July 22, 2011. Initiation points of 47 of the 58 lightning flashes (19 IC and 28 CG) were identified using the first initial breakdown (IB) pulse of each flash measured with E-change data. In this study 32 of the flashes had an LDAR2 (VHF) location coincident with the first IB pulse. For 15 flashes we used Position By Fast Antenna or PBFA [Karunarathne et al., 2013, JGR Atmospheres] to determine the location of the first IB pulse. (The remaining flashes had neither LDAR2 nor PBFA locations of the first IB pulse.) All these initiation points were then mapped onto radar reflectivity of the parent thundercloud. The initiation points of the flashes tend to cluster in specific regions in thundercloud. Lightning activity in both thunderstorms lasted 35 minutes, and all the flash initiation points in each storm occurred within a horizontal region of 4 km by 8 km. Flash initiation altitudes for IC flashes of the two thunderstorms ranged from 5.1 km to 12.1 km altitude while for CG flashes the altitude ranged from 4.6 km to 8.1 km. Based on available radar data for 14 IC flashes and 27 CG flashes, all but one of the IC flashes originated in 10 dBZ – 30 dBZ reflectivity regions while 22 of the CG flashes originated in 30 dBZ – 40 dBZ reflectivities. During the lifetimes of these two storms, no Narrow Bipolar Events occurred.