Lightning Observations during the RELAMPAGO Field Campaign

Some of the largest and most electrically active storms on earth occur in west-central Argentina in the lee of the Andes Mountains and Sierras de Cordoba. Besides producing extreme amounts of lightning these storms also produce large hail, tornadoes and heavy rainfall. As part of the NSF field campaign RELAMPAGO (Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations) planned for November-December 2018, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Colorado (CU) will deploy various instrumentation to measure lightning characteristics and electric fields of these severe storms. This instrumentation includes an array of UAH field change meters, an array of CU field mills and a 4-station LF lightning network. Together with a NASA deployed Lightning Mapping Array, the combined instrumentation will provide an excellent opportunity to comprehensively document the electrical evolution of observed storms. Furthermore, during RELAMPAGO data will be collected from various deployed radars and atmospheric soundings to obtain thermodynamic, kinematic, and microphysical measurements. These will be used together with the lightning measurements from the CU/UAH instrumentation and the NASA LMA to investigate the environmental conditions and physical processes that control storm electrification and lead to extreme lightning flash rates in these severe storms.

We will provide an overview of the various lightning and electrification instrumentation deployed during RELAMPAGO and its setup. Furthermore we will provide an initial overview of cases observed during RELAMPAGO.