HR: 09:05h
AN: AE41A-05    [PDF]
TI: African Lightning-Climate Variability
AU: * Price, C G
EM: cprice@flash.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978 Israel
AU: Asfur, M
EM: mustafa@flash.tau.ac.il
AF: Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978 Israel
AB: Africa is one of the hot spots of global lightning activity, being the continent that produces the largest amount of lightning, based on satellite measurements. These thunderstorms over the tropical African continent are also a large contributor to the flux or moisture, heat and momentum between the tropics and the mid-latitudes. Understanding the variability of thunderstorm activity in the tropics may help us understand the Earth's complicated climate system. Although there are no continuous lightning data available from Africa, it is possible to monitor the regional lightning activity over Africa using remote sensing of extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves in the Schumann resonance band (5-25 Hz). Schumann resonance (SR) data from the Negev Desert, Israel, were used to track the lightning activity over Africa, and then compared with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis product of various climatically important parameters over Africa (specific humidity, relative humidity, temperature, precipitable water, etc.) We have found that on a daily basis the tropical African climate parameters are highly correlated with the SR African lightning observations. We have also investigated the connection between the African lightning activity and the Hadley circulation over Africa, which show strong positive correlations.
UR: http://luna.tau.ac.il/~colin
DE: 3304 Atmospheric electricity
DE: 3309 Climatology (1620)
DE: 3314 Convective processes
DE: 3324 Lightning
SC: Atmospheric and Space Electricity [AE]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting