Total lightning activity as an indicator of updraft characteristics

Ground-based Doppler and dual polarimetric radar observations were used to compute updraft characteristics. Also, ground-based total lightning data were available at both locations.

Results show that time series of updraft volume in the charging zone (at temperatures colder than -5°C) with vertical velocities greater than either 5 or 10 m s⁻¹ have clear relationships with total lightning activity (r = 0.93). Furthermore, these relationships between updraft volume and lightning activity for the storm types of the two climate regimes tend to converge when considering only the subfreezing layers of the clouds.