HR: 0800h
AN: AE21A-0985    [Abstracts]
TI: Correlating Lightning Parameters to Drop Size Distribution
AU: Lapp, J
EM: jlapp@ces.clemson.edu
AF: Clemson University, Dept of Mechanical Engineering 229 Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building (EIB), Clemson, SC 29634-0921 United States
AU: Saylor, J R
EM: jrsaylor@ces.clemson.edu
AF: Clemson University, Dept of Mechanical Engineering 229 Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building (EIB), Clemson, SC 29634-0921 United States
AU: Ulbrich, C W
EM: cwu@bellsouth.net
AF: Clemson University, Dept of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson, SC 29634-0921 United States
AU: * Light, T E
EM: tlavezzi@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Space & Remote Sensing Sciences ISR-2, MS D436, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AB: Many approaches have been attempted to find a relationship between lightning and rainrate suitable as a remote rain measurement method. Some of these include investigations where rain events were sorted by storm type or season, and lightning was classified according to polarity. Recently, the authors of the present work correlated the density of lightning strokes to measures of the drop size distribution (DSD), thereby correlating lightning to the statistics of raindrop size, as opposed to the rainrate. In that work, lightning was correlated to the parameters N0 and Lambda, obtained from the usual exponential parameterization of the DSD: N_o exp ^{-λ D}. The present work refines that approach by sorting lightning into cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud strokes prior to correlation to the DSD parameters. Lightning data for this study were obtained from the Los Alamos Sferic Array (LASA) lightning detection system located in Northern Florida, which reports stroke type, polarity, and peak current estimate. The drop size distribution was collected with a Joss-Waldvogel disdrometer located in Citra, FL located roughly in the center of the LASA. N_o and λ were extracted from the Joss-Waldvogell disdrometer data. In addition, a tipping bucket rain gage co-located with the disdrometer recorded the rain rate (R). In this presentation, N_o, λ and R are each correlated to a variety of lightning parameters (rate, rate-by-type, polarity, etc).
DE: 3304 Atmospheric electricity
DE: 3324 Lightning
DE: 3354 Precipitation (1854)
DE: 3394 Instruments and techniques
SC: Atmospheric and Space Electricity [AE]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005