Study of the correlation between electrical activity and the microphysics and dynamsics of a real severe event using the WRF‐ELEC model

LUQUE, MELINA Y.; BÜRGESSER, RODRIGO E.; RUIZ, JUAN J.

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY

JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD

Año: 2023

0035-9009

Atmospheric electrical activity is one of the most damaging meteorologicalphenomena. Studies suggest that storm electrical discharges are correlated withsevere weather events such as hail, strong surface winds, etc. To study thesecorrelations, in addition to real data, numerical simulations can be used. Inthis work, we investigated the electrical activity of simulated thunderstormsusing the WRF-ELEC model over a case study of the RELAMPAGO field campaign(11 December 2018) associated with the occurrence of generalized deepmoist convection in central Argentina including some supercell storms. TheWRF-ELEC model successfully reproduced the convective event. A trackingalgorithm was used to individualize different convective cells and to study therelationship between their electric activity and different microphysical and kinematicvariables. The model reproduced the expected correlations and time lagsbetween these variables. In particular, the model showed that the best correlationoccurred between the graupel and hail mass and the electric activity ofthe storms; this is expected given the key role of these microphysical speciesin the charge separation processes. Also, 5m⋅s−1 updraft volume and cloud toptemperature (CTT) temporal evolutions presented good correlations with theelectrical activity. Maximum updraft show a less but still good correlation withthe electrical activity.We also investigated the correlation between the electricalactivity and the hail and graupel concentration near the surface (as an indicatorof hail precipitation) and the near-surface winds and we found that correlationis strong. In particular, for near-surface ice, we determined that peaks in electricalactivity precede peaks in hail and graupel precipitation and that electricalactivity could be used as a proxy of this high-impact weather event.