AE12A-06
Variation in Regional and Global Lightning
Monday, 14 December 2015: 11:35
3001 (Moscone West)
Robert H Holzworth II1, James B Brundell2, Michael McCarthy1, Katrina Virts1, Michael L Hutchins1, Abram R Jacobson1 and Stan Heckman3, (1)University of Washington Seattle Campus, Seattle, WA, United States, (2)University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, (3)Organization Not Listed, Washington, DC, United States
Abstract:
Daily global lightning variation over oceans and orography, caused by major weather patterns such as typhoons and seasonal weather oscillations, are determined with high time resolution. Observations of strong variations in global lightning are used to study possible variations in magnetospheric particle densities. Strong lightning patterns associated with ocean currents are demonstrated with a study of the Gulf Stream. We located all major lightning producing storms, using a clustering algorithm on 10 years of World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) data to reduce the influence of rapidly increasing lightning network detection efficiency on temporal studies. The clustered storms are used to study the variations and patterns of global and regional lightning activity. WWLLN and Earth Networks lightning detection networks have been used to show the energy per flash of lightning over the oceans is higher than over land, and the sharp contrast at the coasts will be examined.
