Exploring the relationship between lightning, liquid and frozen water phases using TRMM Precipitation Radar and Lightning Imaging Sensor data

This study uses TRMM Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) and Precipitation Radar (PR) observations to study the fundamental relationship between precipitation ice mass, rainwater mass, and lightning flash density. Thus far our results have focused on the correlation between ice water path and lightning, and indicate that the physical assumptions of precipitation-based charging and mixed phase precipitation development are robust on global scales. Further, we find that the relationship between precipitation ice water path and lightning flash density is relatively invariant between land, ocean and coastal regimes. Hence lightning data may be a useful variable for inclusion in combined space borne algorithms designed to retrieve ice water content. The work to be presented will expand upon the global ice water path-lightning result by examining the interrelationships between rain-water path, ice water path and lightning over the three oceanic, land and coastal regimes, and over more specific “phase-defined” regimes, such as those encountered in tropical easterly waves and/or tropical monsoon phases.