Distinctive Signals in 1-min Observations of Overshooting Tops and Lightning Activity in a Severe Supercell Thunderstorm

Borque, Paloma; Vidal, Luciano; Rugna, Martín; Lang, Timothy J.; Nicora, María Gabriela; Nesbitt, Stephen W.

doi:10.1029/2020jd032856

Title: Distinctive Signals in 1-min Observations of Overshooting Tops and Lightning Activity in a Severe Supercell Thunderstorm

Journal Article · Wed Oct 21 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2020jd032856· OSTI ID:1706680

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Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, AL (United States)
National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires (Argentina). CEILAP - UMI-IFAECI-CNRS 3351, UNIDEF (MINDEF - CONICET)
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)

This work examines a severe weather event that took place over central Argentina on December 11, 2018. The evolution of the storm from its initiation, rapid organization into a supercell, and eventual decay was analyzed with high-temporal resolution observations. This work provides insight into the spatio-temporal co-evolution of storm kinematics (updraft area and lifespan), cloud-top cooling rates, and lightning production that led to severe weather. The analyzed storm presented two convective periods with associated severe weather. An overall decrease in cloud-top local minima IR brightness temperature (MinIR10.3), increase in overshooting top area, and lightning jump (LJ) preceded both periods. LJs provided the highest lead time to the occurrence of severe weather, with the ground-based lightning networks providing the maximum warning time of around 30 min. Lightning flash counts from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) were underestimated when compared to detections from ground-based lightning networks. Among the possible reasons for GLM’s lower detection efficiency were an optically dense medium located above lightning sources and the occurrence of flashes smaller than GLM’s footprint. The minimum MinIR provided the shorter warning time to severe weather occurrence. However, secondary minima in MinIR10.3 that preceded the absolute minima improved this warning time by more than 10 min. Furthermore, trends in MinIR10.3 for time scales shorter than 6 min revealed shorter cycles of fast cooling and warming, which provided information about the lifecycle of updrafts within the storm. The advantages of using observations with high-temporal resolution to analyze the evolution and intensity of convective storms are discussed.

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Research Organization:: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-76RL01830; AGS-1661719; DE‐AC05‐76RLO1830

OSTI ID:: 1706680

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1786753

Report Number(s):: PNNL-SA-152381

Journal Information:: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 125, Issue 20; ISSN 2169-897X

Publisher:: American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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