Investigation of Meteorological Fields and Satellite Data Relevant for Model Prediction of Lightning Flashes and Lightning NOx Production

Nitrogen oxides (NO_x) produced by lightning flashes affect the climate through their impact on the distributions of greenhouse gasses, especially ozone and methane. To better understand the conditions under which NO_x producing lightning flashes occur, meteorological fields from version 5 of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS-5) model, lightning products from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) aboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16), and NO₂ columns from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) will be compared for several thunderstorms observed during July and August 2019. The goals of the study are to compare the modeled and observed storms and to examine the relationship between flash frequency, flash multiplicity, optical flash energy, and NO₂ columns. Past studies have shown an inverse relationship between flash frequency and optical energy and consequently NO_x production per flash; this relationship is further explored in this study. Environmental conditions from observed upper air soundings and radar data will be compared with GEOS-5 output to identify which storms were captured accurately and to identify which environmental parameters are best captured in the models. Finally, the distributions of meteorological parameters from GEOS-5, such as convective cloud top height, convective precipitation, and convective mass flux will be compared to GLM products including flashes and groups. Past studies have parameterized flashes and groups using these products.