Progress on Feasibility Study of Airport Lightning Avoidance System

Lightning strikes to aircraft can have a significant impact on aviation transport efficiency. For developing a system for avoidance of lightning strikes to aircraft, it is important to investigate the lightning discharge potential and process interacted with aircraft, such as aircraft triggering of lightning. JAXA and MRI started an observation campaign in 2015, for collecting measurement data of high-resolution weather radars and high-sensitivity lightning location system, along with the ambient temperature from the Japan Meteorological Agency operational mesoscale analysis and from commercial aircraft. In the presentation, details of the observation campaign and progress of the analyses will be presented. Additionally, we give a brief introduction of a study of JAXA and Osaka University about machine learning technique for classifying thunderstorms with or without lightning based on statistical engineering approach.