Abstract
Abstract. The electrodynamic properties of intense oceanic lightning discharges are compared to intense continental lightning discharges. Particularly intense negative lightning discharges with absolute charge moments > 2 kC · km occur more often over the oceans than over the continents during April 1998. Intense continental lightning discharges, with negative and positive polarity, and intense positive oceanic lightning discharges primarily occur associated with mesoscale convection in the late evening. The number of intense negative oceanic lightning discharges increases in the early morning hours, probably associated with the resurgence of oceanic mesoscale convection in coastal areas. The day-to-day variability of intense negative oceanic lightning discharges exhibits a five day periodicity, possibly related to planetary waves.Key words. Meteorology and atmospheric dynamics (lightning; ocean-atmosphere interactions) – Oceanography - general (marine meteorology)
Highlights
Climatological studies of synoptic audible thunder observations on ships and at meteorological observatories reported a ∼ 10–30% contribution of oceanic thunderstorms to global thunderstorm activity (Brooks, 1925)
Oceanic lightning flashes in coastal areas can be detected by their Very Low-Frequency (VLF) electromagnetic radiation, for example, recorded by the National Lightning Detection Network (Cummins et al, 1998)
The electrodynamic properties of intense oceanic lightning discharges are compared to intense continental lightning discharges
Summary
Climatological studies of synoptic audible thunder observations on ships and at meteorological observatories reported a ∼ 10–30% contribution of oceanic thunderstorms to global thunderstorm activity (Brooks, 1925). To investigate the electrodynamic properties of intense oceanic lightning discharges in more detail, the inferred charge moments are summarized in 0.1 kC·km large charge moment bins for the oceans and the continents (Fig. 3, upper panel). The observed decrease in lightning discharge occurrences with small absolute charge moments |Ql| < 0.5 kC·km results from the detection efficiency of the global network of magnetometers, which is only sensitive to the most intense lightning discharges around the planet Earth (Fullekrug and Constable, 2000).
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