Assessment of the Efficacy of Lightning Forecast Over India: A Diagnostic Study
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Pure and Applied Geophysics
Assessment of the Efficacy of Lightning Forecast Over India: A Diagnostic Study A. SANDEEP,1,2
A. JAYAKUMAR,1 M. SATEESH,1 SAJI MOHANDAS,1 V. S. PRASAD,1 and E. N. RAJAGOPAL1
Abstract—Lightning has emerged as one of the major weather hazards in India. Lightning forecasts are introduced into the operational National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting regional unified model (NCUM-R) to predict the events in advance. A new blended electric scheme following McCaul et al. (2009) is employed to predict the lightning flash count as a useful tool for day-to-day prediction of thunderstorm activity and intensity. A total of four numerical experiments, namely CNTL, EXP1, EXP2, and EXP3, were conducted by using the NCUM-R based on the graupel water path (GWP) amount and the process allowing the snow-rain collisions to form a graupel. The numerical simulation forecasts are compared with the Indian Air Force and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology earth network lightning sensor data. A case study of a convective system associated with a severe lightning event that occurred on 7 February 2019 over the northern region of India is diagnosed. The observations indicate stronger lightning cells present over the Haryana–Punjab region, with a leaflike extension through south-eastwards and continuing up to the Himalaya foothills. Such south-eastward progression of the lightning system is well captured in all the experiments. However, when the GWP threshold is set to 200 g m-3, and allowing for the snowrain collision process, the counts are improved by approximately 50% compared to the control run, and is closely agree with the observation count. Temporal evolution characteristics of the vertical distribution of the hydrometeors and vertical velocity support the formulation of the revised lightning parameterization scheme. Statistical metrics were computed for the pre-monsoon month indicating the robustness of the model with the revised scheme. Hence, the revised scheme is chosen for the operational implementation of the lightning flash prediction system of the NCUM-R. Further modifications of the electric scheme are warranted based on the cloud microphysics response over different weather regimes. Keywords: Numerical weather prediction/forecasting, forecast verification, convective storms, lightning, observational data.
1
National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Project Scientist-D, NCMRWF, MoES, A-50, Institutional Area, Sector-62, Noida, UP 201309, India. E-mail: [email protected] 2 School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
1. Introduction Lightning is one of the most lethal natural phenomena, causing substantial damage to human life and property, renewable energy production, and electric-power networks (Cooper and Holle 2019). According to the National Disaster Management Authority of India reports from 1967 to 2012, lightning alone accounted for about 39% of deaths (NDMA 2018). A total of 5259 people died due to lightning strike
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