Promising results for lightning predictions
Lopez, Philippe
The focus of this article is on lightning produced by convection inside the troposphere, which is by far the most common cause.
ECMWF has developed a lightning parametrization that is expected to provide global predictions of lightning activity operationally from mid-2018. Experiments have shown that ECMWF ensemble forecasts (ENS) for lightning can have useful skill to at least day 3, while a good agreement with observations can be achieved in deterministic forecasts on temporal and spatial scales above 6 hours and 50 km.<br>Work is under way to enable the model to distinguish between cloud-to-ground and intra-cloud lightning. The possibility of assimilating observations from lightning imagers on new geostationary satellites is also being investigated.
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