Understanding Severe Weather Processes
- Studying the climatology surrounding
thunderstorms helps us understand storm morphology and evolution for individual
events, and helps us pinpoint areas and conditions that create higher risks
for lightning injuries.
Data from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) has been used by NSSL scientists to produce lightning climatologies in different states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. - Knowledge gained from field observations of the
atmospheric boundary layer and storm formation using mobile and fixed observing
facilities will point to new ways for the National Weather Service to use
lightning, radar, satellite, surface, sounding, and aircraft measurements
to improve forecasts and warnings of hazardous weather.
The recent Thunderstorm Electrification and Lightning Experiment (TELEX) used the Oklahoma Lightning Mapping Array, mobile laboratories, instrumented mobile mesonets, and the KOUN polarimetric radar to learn how lightning and other electrical storm properties are dependent on storm structure, updrafts, and precipitation.
By analyzing three-dimensional lightning data from the Oklahoma Lightning Mapping Array, NSSL scientists hope to learn more about how storms produce intra-cloud and cloud-to-ground flashes and how each type is related to tornadoes and other severe weather.
Scientists wanting to know more about the timing and location of the initiation of storms began planning a convection initiation study (TIMEX), which later contributed to the groundwork for a major field experiment, the International H2O Project (IHOP).
Field data collected data from convection initiation research (IHOP) helps scientists understand how rolls and boundaries such as fronts and drylines develop and force cloud and storm formation, leading to improved convection initiation forecasting. - Forecasters will be able to use information about
the structure and longevity of thunderstorm complexes to make better forecasts
of derechos, widespread severe surface winds that can be extremely hazardous
to life and property.
Researchers, using model simulations to better understand how strong thunderstorm complexes with severe surface winds persist for long periods of time, found that the motion of the systems combined with knowledge of how the winds change with height 5 to 10 kilometers above the ground also plays a significant role in their structure and longevity. - Knowledge gained from numerically
simulating lightning in 3-D dynamic cloud models may lead to ways
lightning data could be used to improve forecasts.
NSSL scientists are using numerical models of thunderstorms that include lightning simulations to see if there are correlations between the total number of flashes and the strength of the updraft and the volume of hail present in the storm.
