NUMBER OF SINGLE-STROKE FLASHES IN THE ALPINE REGION DETERMINED WITH A VIDEO AND FIELD RECORDING SYSTEM

Lukas Schwalt, Stephan Pack, Wolfgang Schulz, Gerhard Diendorfer, Georg Pistotnik

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Since 2008, measurements of natural cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning were performed during warm season thunderstorms in the Alpine region of Austria to generate a ground truth data set of lightning strikes. Those measurements were performed with a mobile high speed video and an electric field recording system (VFRS) to observe the optical properties of lightning discharges and to record the ambient electric field. In 2015, the VFRS`s high speed camera was upgraded in order to significantly increase the optical and temporal resolution of the video data. Due to the upgrade it was possible to record a high quality data set during 20 thunderstorm days at 15 different sites between May and August 2015.
For this paper these data sets of the Alpine region are used to analyze possible reasons for the detected variation of single-stroke flashes. The ground truth data sets are also compared to formerly published values from different countries. To provide additional information, data of the Austrian Lightning Location System (LLS), ALDIS (Austrian Lightning Detection and Information System), is compared to the VFRS ground truth data, operated by Graz University of Technology, to analyze the reasons for the varying amount of single-stroke flashes in the considered region. Thunderstorm types are classified with radar data and with wind measurements in order to investigate the effect of thunderstorm organization on their lightning characteristics.
Compared to values from the literature the percentage of single-stroke flashes in this study present a higher value for negative flashes (26 %) and values in the same range for positive flashes (89 %).
Results of this report shall contribute to a better understanding of the lightning process in general and the behavior of thunderstorms in the Alpine region in particular.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages13
Publication statusPublished - 2017
EventInternational Colloquium on Lightning and Power Systems (ICLP) 2017: ICLP 2017 - Ljubljana, Slovenia
Duration: 17 Sept 201720 Sept 2017

Conference

ConferenceInternational Colloquium on Lightning and Power Systems (ICLP) 2017
Country/TerritorySlovenia
CityLjubljana
Period17/09/1720/09/17

Keywords

  • Cloud-to-Ground lightning
  • Single-stroke flash
  • Ground truth data
  • Alpine region
  • Lightning Location System

Fields of Expertise

  • Sustainable Systems

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