The 8th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology

P8.2
USE OF LIGHTNING DATA AS A WEATHER RADAR

Jeffrey D. Giovino, The MITRE Corp, McLean, VA; and J. P. Mittelman

In the near future, the FAA will be deploying the Display System Replacement (DSR), the new air traffic control display hardware for en route air traffic controllers. This equipment will be capable of displaying WSR-88D precipitation mosaics generated by the FAA’s Weather and Radar Processor (WARP). In western portions of the USA, coverage of the WSR-88Ds is not complete, due to mountainous obstructions, resulting is small holes, or gaps, in the mosaics. Some within the FAA are concerned about these gaps and have proposed maintaining a few long range aircraft surveillance radars to cover these gaps. Because the maintenance of these radars is very expensive, other alternatives are being considered.

One of the alternatives is the use of lightning data to fill the gaps in the coverage—lightning is an excellent indicator of conditions that may adversely affect aircraft, and lightning sensor coverage is available throughout the USA. MIT/LL has developed an algorithm that approximates precipitation using lightning data. MITRE/CAASD is experimenting with the algorithm using their WARP-DSR test bed to determine the algorithm’s viability to supplement the WSR-88D mosaic generated by WARP. If successful, this capability could be added to WARP and thus be provided to DSR and the controllers. This paper presents qualitative results of the initial assessment

The 8th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology