INVESTIGADORES
BURGESSER Rodrigo Exequiel
artículos
Título:
Correlations between deep convection and lightning activity on a global scale
Autor/es:
E. E. AVILA; R. E. BÜRGESSER; N. E. CASTELLANO; A. B. COLLIER; R. H. CAMPAGNUCCI; A. R. W. HUGHES
Revista:
JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND SOLAR-TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS
Editorial:
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
Referencias:
Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2010 vol. 72 p. 1114 - 1121
ISSN:
1364-6826
Resumen:
Satellite observations of cloud top temperature and lightning flash
distribution are used to examine the relationship between deep
convection and lightning activity over the tropical regions of the
northern and southern hemispheres. In agreement with previous work, the
analysis of the results shows that, in the summer of both hemispheres,
the lightning activity in continental deep convective storms is more
intense than that in marine deep convective storms by a factor of
between 7 and 10. Furthermore, it was observed that on average the daily
lightning rate per 1°×1° grid cell for the southern hemisphere (SH) is
about 20% greater than that of the northern hemisphere (NH), which can
be attributed to a larger fractional cover by deep convective clouds in
the SH. By using a set of independent indicators, it is shown that deep
convection and lightning activity over land are well correlated (with
correlation coefficients of 0.8 and 0.6 for NH and SH, respectively).
This suggests the capacity for observations to act as a possible method
of monitoring continental deep convective clouds, which play a key role
in regulating the Earths climate. Since lightning can be monitored
easily from ground networks and satellites, it could be a useful tool
for validating the performance of model convective schemes and for
monitoring changes in climate parameters.