GOES-R Preparatory Activities: Short-Term Thunderstorm and Lightning Forecasting for Aviation

Abstract

Forecasting the initiation, temporal and spatial scales, and the immediate impacts of thunderstorms with accuracies demanded by the aviation community remains one of the more challenging problems in meteorology today. Improved methods have been developed for nowcasting convective initiation (CI) and thunderstorm evolution based on the real-time processing of satellite fields. These methods are applicable over land, and especially over oceanic regions where real-time radar data is not available. New techniques are being developed to predict the first occurrence of lightning (“lightning initiation”, or LI) over small spatial and temporal scales (on the order of 1-5 km and 0-1 hour) using real-time meteorological satellite imagery (e.g., GOES, MSG, MODIS) and state-of-the-art lightning data from ground-based Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) systems. The goals of this project include to: 1) use GOES and LMA data for lightning forecasting (in time and event intensity per storm), as a prelude to the Global Lightning Mapper (GLM) as proposed on GOES-R, 2) develop ways of using hyperspectral satellite data to identify important precursors to convective thunderstorm initiation and LI; (here, CI is defined as the first detection of a >30 dBZ radar echo from cumulus clouds), and 3) form a general foundation for using future hyperspectral and lightning data (e.g. AIRS, GOES-R/GLM) to monitor thunderstorms. The Advance Satellite Aviation-weather Products (ASAP) research initiative represents a collaboration between the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Aviation Weather Research Program’s (AWRP) Product Development Teams (PDTs), and the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s (NASA) Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP). This presentation will highlight how the above research benefits AWRP PDT decision support systems that routinely diagnose thunderstorms over land and oceanic regions. The status of the ASAP initiative and plans for this CI/LI research are overviewed in light of the coming GOES-R/GLM instrumentation toward 2012/2013.