Distinctive Signals in 1‐minute Observations of Overshooting Tops and Lightning Activity in a Severe Supercell Thunderstorm

This work examines a severe weather event that took place over central Argentina on 11 December 2018. The evolution of the storm from its initiation, rapid organization into a supercell, and eventual decay was analyzed with high-temporal resolution observations. This work provides insight into the s...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Borque, Paloma Celina, Vidal, Luciano, Rugna, Martin Ezequiel, Lang, Timothy J., Nicora, Maria Gabriela, Nesbitt, Stephen William
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:Argentina
Institución:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repositorio:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/143737
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/143737
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:AEROSOL TRANSPORT
ATMOSPHERIC MODELING
LARGE EDDY SIMULATION (LES)
RANDOM WALK
SEA SPRAY GENERATION
UPSCALED MODELING
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.5
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1
Descripción
Sumario:This work examines a severe weather event that took place over central Argentina on 11 December 2018. The evolution of the storm from its initiation, rapid organization into a supercell, and eventual decay was analyzed with high-temporal resolution observations. This work provides insight into the spatio-temporal co-evolution of storm kinematics (updraft area and lifespan), cloud-top cooling rates, and lightning production that led to severe weather. The analyzed storm presented two convective periods with associated severe weather. An overall decrease in cloud-top local minima IR brightness temperature (MinIR) and lightning jump (LJ) preceded both periods. LJs provided the highest lead time to the occurrence of severe weather, with the ground-based lightning networks providing the maximum warning time of around 30 min. Lightning flash counts from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) were underestimated when compared to detections from ground-based lightning networks. Among the possible reasons for GLM's lower detection efficiency were an optically dense medium located above lightning sources and the occurrence of flashes smaller than GLM's footprint. The minimum MinIR provided the shorter warning time to severe weather occurrence. However, the secondary minima in MinIR that preceded the absolute minima improved this warning time by more than 10 min. Trends in MinIR for time scales shorter than 6 min revealed shorter cycles of fast cooling and warming, which provided information about the lifecycle of updrafts within the storm. The advantages of using observations with high-temporal resolution to analyze the evolution and intensity of convective storms are discussed.