Products in support of DC3
Climatology Products for Pre-Mission Planning
Climatological overview
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Multi-year overview of CG lightning flashes and other parameters at the 3 proposed study locations.
PowerPoint presentation (0.4 Mb).
Lightning flash movies
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Daily average cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud flashes over North America
Quicktime movie (5 Mb).
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: Quicktime movie (45 Mb).
July 2004: Quicktime movie (47 Mb).
August 2004: Quicktime movie (46 Mb).
Based on NLDN data provided by Vaisala Thunderstorm. -
Tropopause height with cloud-to-ground flashes over the USA
July 2006: Quicktime movie (21 Mb).
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: Quicktime movie (20 Mb).
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
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10-year precipitation climatology for the DC3 study regions
PowerPoint (6 Mb).
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Movie showing the diurnal variation of precipitation across the USA
Microsoft Windows Media Player format (avi) (.4 Mb).
Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) information
Website with realtime and archived data from the Oklahoma LMA
Website with realtime and archived data from the Alabama LMA
Summary of Oklahoma lightning activity for spring and summer 2005 (pdf). Note that many of the large systems are most active at night.
FLEXPART NOx tracer movies
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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.
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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.
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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.
Single image showing summer 2004 average. -
FLEXPART anthopogenic NOx tracer, 4 day residence time (15 Mb Quicktime).
Single image showing summer 2004 average.
