Study of Lightning Activity Over the Warm Pool Western Pacific Ocean (Toga-CoareRegion) for 1993

摘要

The warm pool western Pacific Ocean is an area of the equatorial tropicscharacterized by strong and frequent convection, and vigorous lightning activity. However, it has been noted by various researchers that the vast oceanic expanses experience less lightning activity than adjacent land masses by as much as one order of magnitude. A report herein presents a look at the characteristics of lightning as recorded by three individual magnetic direction finders (DF' s) at the Kapingamarangi Atoll, Rabaul, and Kavieng deployed to the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA-COARE). The lightning data recorded by each DF are azimuthally separated into land and ocean sectors in an effort to assess each regimes similarities and differences. In addition to analyzing some of the more typical lightning parameters (e.g., percentage of positive lightning and positive and negative multiplicities), the thermodynamic relationships between convective available potential energy (CAPE), wet-bulb potential temperature, and flash rates are examined. Finally, the lightning data are run through time series methods in an attempt to both better describe the data and to appraise any possible link between lightning activity and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) through the use of an appropriately constructed band-pass filter.