Climatology Products for DC3 Pre-Mission Planning
Climatological overview
Lightning flash movies
Daily average cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud flashes over North America (5Mb Quicktime movie)
Based on a 1995-2000 climatology from the OTD polar orbiting instrument. Data are shown for May 1 through August 31 at 2.5 degree resolution. The climatology is heavily smoothed over a distance of 7.5 degrees and with a 3-month running mean. Data processed by the NASA Global Hydrology Resource Center.Hourly cloud-to-ground flashes over the USA June 2004 (45Mb Quicktime movie)
July 2004 (47Mb Quicktime movie)
August 2004 (46Mb Quicktime movie)
Based on NLDN data provided by Vaisala Thunderstorm.Tropopause height with cloud-to-ground flashes over the USA July 2006 (21Mb Quicktime movie)
1x1 degree ECMWF tropopause height, every 3 hours during July 2006. NLDN and LRLDN lightning flashes north of 25 N are overlain (white dots), with a histogram of the tropopause height above each flash.June 2004 (20Mb Quicktime movie)
1x1 degree ECMWF tropopause height, every 3 hours during June 2004. NLDN lightning flashes are overlain (white dots), with a histogram of the tropopause height above each flash.June 2004 histograms of tropopause height above DC3 study sites Using the data from the June 2004 movie above, this figure shows the distribution of the tropopause height at the time of lightning flashes within 3x4 degree boxes above northeastern Colorado, Oklahoma City, and Huntsville, Alabama.
Rit Carbone's Precipitation climatology
Diurnal variation of precipitation across the USA (.4Mb Microsoft Windows Media Player avi)
Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) information
Summary of Oklahoma lightning activity for spring and summer 2005 PDF file Note that many of the large systems are most active at night.
Summary of Oklahoma lightning activity for April-September 2004-2005, plus STEPS results
FLEXPART NOx tracer movies
FLEXPART lightning NOx tracer, 5 day residence time (44 Mb Quicktime) NOx emitted as a passive tracer at the exact horizontal location of the 32 million cloud-to-ground lightning flashes detected by the NLDN (data provided by Vaisala Thunderstorm) between June 21 and August 15, 2004. The tracer is released in the vertical according to a normal distribution between the tropopause and 6 km above sea level. The tracer was advected by ECMWF windfields and is shown as a total column amount.
FLEXPART lightning NOx tracer, 10 day residence time (46 Mb Quicktime) NOx emitted as a passive tracer at the exact horizontal location of the cloud-to-ground lightning flashes detected by the NLDN and LRLDN (data provided by Vaisala Thunderstorm) between June 21 and August 15, 2004, and from a lightning flash climatology between the equator and 21 N. The tracer is released in the vertical according to a normal distribution between the tropopause and 6 km above sea level. The tracer was advected by ECMWF windfields and is shown as a total column amount.
FLEXPART anthopogenic NOx tracer, 20 day residence time (15 Mb Quicktime) NOx emitted as a passive tracer (1999 EPA inventory), advected by ECMWF windfields and shown as a column amount in the lowest 2 km of the atmosphere.
FLEXPART anthopogenic NOx tracer, 4 day residence time (15 Mb Quicktime)
Single image showing summer 2004 average
