GOES Lightning Mapper Sensor
(GOES – LMS)
The National Weather
Association (NWA) is a member-led, non-profit, professional organization
supporting and promoting excellence in operational meteorology and related
activities. Excellence in daily weather
observing and forecasting for the public good can best be achieved by continual
modernization of observing equipment and taking advantage of new technologies
as soon as possible. Therefore, on behalf of the over 3,000 NWA members from
all sectors of the meteorological community, the NWA President with the advice
and consent of the NWA Council requests the support of all concerned for the
inclusion of a Lightning Mapper Sensor (LMS) on GOES-R,
and if possible, an earlier demonstration
geostationary platform, as soon as feasible. The highly unique LMS
sensor would allow for continuous monitoring and observation of
thunderstorms over the Continental United States and southern Canada, portions
of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins including Puerto Rico and other
islands in the field of view, and Central and South America.
The LMS observations of total lightning from GOES
would provide a continuous “snapshot” of a storm's convective
vigor, growth, and decay not possible with existing satellite imagers, weather
radars, or cloud-to-ground lightning networks.
The ground-based National Lightning Detection Network can only observe
cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning over the Continental United States, southern
Canada, and adjacent coastal waters. The highly sensitive Charge Coupled Device detector array on
the LMS will also allow discrimination of lightning from bright background
surfaces such as sunlit clouds during the daytime, resulting in a 24-hour-a-day
detection capability.
Research continues to
indicate that LMS measurements would provide vital information that could help
the operational weather, aviation, disaster preparedness, and fire prevention
communities in their support of commerce, transportation, security and public
safety:
(1) Potential for increased lead times and reduced false
alarms for warnings of severe thunderstorms and violent tornadoes (Goodman et
al. 1988; Williams et al. 1999; Buechler et al. 2000)
(2) More reliable warnings of CG strikes, resulting in
reduced fatalities and injuries, economic benefits to electrical utilities and
consumers (Weber et al. 1998)
(3) Improvements in the initialization of numerical
weather prediction models by better identification of deep convection
(Alexander et al. 1999; Chong et al. 2001)
(4) Better forecasts of forest fire initiation by
identification of long duration, continuing-current lightning discharges with
dry thunderstorms (Weber et al. 1998)
(5) Improved routing of commercial, military, and private
aircraft over the Continental United States (Seliga et al. 2002) and oceanic
regions (Weber et al. 1998) where observations of thunderstorm intensity
are currently scarce
(6) Support for spacecraft launches and landings, which
are critically dependent on absence of both CG and in-cloud lightning
(7) Greater ability to monitor intensification or weakening of storms during radar outages, or where
radar coverage is poor, such as in mountainous areas (Weber et al. 1998)
(8)
Potentially improved short range forecasts of heavy rainfall and flash flooding
(Weber et al. 1998)
(9)
Identification of heavy convective snowfall (“thunder-snow”) (personal
communication, Dr. Patrick Market 2003)
(10)
Improved ability to monitor the intensification of tropical cyclones, which are
often accompanied by increased eyewall lightning activity (Weber et al. 1998)
(11)
Updates and derivations of lightning and heavy rainfall climatology
within the GOES field-of-view for improved depiction of spatial and temporal
variations that may have climatic significance
(12) Advances in lightning research (e.g., studies of cloud-to-cloud lightning, Stratospheric sprites, and elves)
A prior
cost-benefit study on a future GOES LMS (Weber et al. 1998) estimated
that this instrument could prevent approximately 10 convective weather related
fatalities, 150 injuries, and $40 million in property damage and business
operating costs per year. These
monetized savings would significantly exceed the costs of the sensor. As a first step, we recommend that NOAA,
NASA, Department of Defense, and private industry work together to implement
this new sensor as an “Instrument of Opportunity” on the first available GOES,
and then plan for subsequent operational status on the advanced GOES-R series. Even prior to a
GOES deployment, a demonstration geostationary LMS would result in valuable
risk-reduction activities, including the assessment of data delivery, product
development, and decision-making capabilities.
References:
Alexander, G.D., J.A., Weinman, V.M. Karyampudi, W.S. Olson and A.C.L. Lee, 1999: The effect of assimilating rainrates derived from satellites and lightning on forecasts of the 1993 Superstorm. Mon. Wea. Rev., 127, 1433-1457.
Buechler, D.E., K.T. Driscoll,
S.J. Goodman and H.J. Christian, 2000: Lightning activity within a tornadic
thunderstorm observed by the Optical Transient Detector (OTD). Geophys. Res.
Lett, 27, 2253-2256.
Chong, D., J. A. Weinman,
C.A. Morales and W.S. Olson, 2001: The effect of spaceborne microwave and
ground-based continuous lightning measurements on forecasts of the 1998
Groundhog Day storm. Mon. Wea. Rev., 129, 1809-1833.
Goodman, S.J., D.E. Buechler,
P.D. Wright and W.D. Rust, 1988: Lightning and precipitation history of a microburst-producing
storm. Geophys. Res. Lett., 15,
1185-1188.
Seliga, T.A., D.A. Hazan and
C. Schauland, 2002: Analysis of lightning cloud-to-ground flash activity for
national aviation choke point region studies. Preprints: 10th
Conference on Aviation, Range and Aerospace Meteorology, American
Meteorological Society, Portland, OR, 13-16 May 2002.
Weber, M. E., E. R. Williams,
M. M. Wolfson and S. J. Goodman, 1998: An Assessment of the Operational Utility
of a GOES Lightning Mapping Sensor. Project
Report NOAA-18, Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Lexington, Massachusetts, 13 February 1998.
Williams, E.R., B. Boldi, A.
Matlin, M. Weber, S. Hodanish, D. Sharp, S. Goodman, R. Raghavan and D.
Buechler, 1999: The behavior of total lightning in severe Florida
thunderstorms. Atmos. Research,
51, 245-265.
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