In late April, NASA SPoRT and the Albuquerque NWS met with scientists at New Mexico Tech to coordinate the integration of the Langmuir Lab lightning mapping array data into our operations. According to Bill Rison, Paul Krehbiel, and Ron Thomas, New Mexico Tech’s Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) is a 3-dimensional total lightning location system. The system is patterned after the LDAR (Lightning Detection and Ranging) system developed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by Carl Lennon, Launa Maier and colleagues. The LMA measures the time of arrival of 60 MHz RF radiation from a lightning discharge at multiple stations, and locates the sources of the radiation to produce a three-dimensional map of total lightning activity. The time-of-arrival technique for studying lightning was pioneered by Dave Proctor in South Africa. The NASA SPoRT core project site details that operationally, total lightning data provide several advantages to forecasters. First, total lightning data often give a 3-5 minute lead time ahead of the first cloud-to-ground lightning strike. This improves lightning safety for the National Weather Service’s Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFs) and Airport Weather Warnings (AWWs). This safety feature also can be used for incident support of special events. In addition, the total lightning data provides information about the spatial extent of lightning that is not available in the traditional cloud-to-ground data (http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/lma/). This data may also be used to evaluate the degree of lightning activity within active wildfire smoke plumes. The image below is an example of an LMA station at Briggsdale, Colorado taken by New Mexico Tech. These stations are solar-powered and communications are operated via cell technology.
After the first collaboration between NWS Albuquerque and NM Tech, forecaster Jennifer Palucki met with Harald Edens in June to install the xLMA and Live LMA software onto our office outreach laptop. The LMA data that forecasters are evaluating at Albuquerque consists of source densities. The imagery is available as a contour shaded product and describes the overall extent of sources from a particular thunderstorm or complex of thunderstorms. The Live LMA software provides the actual point source information that make up the densities available in AWIPS. The forecaster can actually see the structure of the point sources making up a flash on a 1-minute temporal resolution. Figure 2 below shows the composite radar reflectivity valid at 0200 UTC July 23, 2014 for a complex of thunderstorms developing southward into the Albuquerque Metro Area. The associated LMA source density product at 0202 UTC in Figure 3 illustrates the structure of the shaded point sources for the lightning flash. The graphic shown in Figure 4 details the point sources available with the Live LMA software. The source densities making up the flash during this 1-minute period stretched as far as 30-km from north to south and 20-km from east to west. The altitude of the main source region was near 10-km. The data available in AWIPS also allows the forecaster to slice and dice the data by elevation angle. Forecasters at the Albuquerque NWS will continue evaluating the LMA products through summer 2014 to offer feedback to NASA SPoRT and NM Tech on its operational application.