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New WMO Certified Megaflash Lightning Extremes for Flash Distance (768 km) and Duration (17.01 seconds) Recorded from Space

Journal Article · · Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [13]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, AL (United States)
  3. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  4. Meteorological Service Singapore (Singapore)
  5. South African Weather Service, Pretoria (South Africa)
  6. Holle Meteorology & Photography, Oro Valley, AZ (United States)
  7. Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (Czechia); Univ. of Bergen (Norway)
  8. Univ. of Bergen (Norway)
  9. Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona (Spain)
  10. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (India)
  11. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  12. University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona (Spain); University of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom)
  13. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Initial global extremes in lightning duration and horizontal distance were established in 2017 by an international panel of atmospheric lightning scientists and engineers assembled by the WMO. The subsequent launch of NOAA’s latest GOES-16/17 satellites with their Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLMs) enabled extreme lightning to be monitored continuously over the western hemisphere up to 55⁰ latitude for the first time. Consequently, the former lightning extremes were more than doubled in 2019 to 709 km for distance and 16.730 s for duration. Continued detection and analysis of lightning “megaflashes” has now revealed two flashes that even exceed those 2019 records. As part of the ongoing work of the WMO in detection and documentation of global weather extremes, an international WMO evaluation committee was created to critically adjudicate these two GLM megaflash cases as new records for extreme lightning.
Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
Czech Science Foundation (GACR); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1844162
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-21-29056
Journal Information:
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal Name: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 103; ISSN 0003-0007
Publisher:
American Meteorological SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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