Optical Lightning Characteristics of 2018 Atlantic Hurricanes from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper

The launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16) satellite provides a new opportunity to investigate and better understand lightning trends of Atlantic Hurricanes during development, intensification, and landfall. The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) and the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) from GOES-16 provide coverage of tropical cyclones both spatially and temporally that has not been previously available for study. Additionally, the 2017 and 2018 Atlantic Hurricane seasons provided a wide variety of tropical cyclone intensity and coverage for this comparison.

Lightning data from GLM is compared with ground-based lightning detections and the blended Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) quantifications of reflectivity and azimuthal shear for individual storm cells at the time of landfall of hurricanes Florence and Michael on the southeast coast of the United States. This combination of lightning data throughout the tropical cyclone lifetime, including landfall when available, should allow for the increased use of lightning data in support of tropical cyclone forecasting and within local severe and hazardous warnings in the future. Regardless of whether this study demonstrates a clear-cut concept of operational utility, we articulate a plausible path forward of the GOES-16 GLM data based on the results of this study of the initial data.