Experimental Use of Total Lightning Data at the Aviation Weather Center/Aviation Weather Testbed

As lightning detection and application becomes more relevant, especially to aviation operations, it is important to evolve to using the data in a way that becomes more relevant. Many of our convective products (i.e. Convective SIGMET) at the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) rely on lightning information not only for situational awareness but on forecast production and verification. The Aviation Weather Testbed at AWC has been evolving the use of lightning information for internal applications supporting the AWC mission for optimal aviation safety and efficiency. Experimental sets include the use of gridded total lightning datasets such as gridded stroke density in an operational context for the production and evaluation of convective forecast products. Other experimental sets include a statistical correlation between radar echotop information and lightning density to provide a pseudoechotop data display at a higher temporal density than radar for better situational awareness.