Los Alamos Sensor Information Sheds Gentle On Highly effective Lightning Inside Clouds

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory used machine studying to amass the most important dataset ever of trans-ionospheric pulse pairs, a really high-frequency radio sign generated by lightning. Their examine sheds gentle on how the facility in lightning radiates. Credit/Dreamstime.com

LANL News:

• Research crew makes use of largest dataset ever of very high-frequency radio alerts generated by lightning to handle long-standing query

A analysis crew at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) just lately discovered that the energy distinction between two very high-frequency radio pulses in lightning is carefully associated to the altitude of the lightning within the cloud — a discovering that sheds gentle on how the facility in lightning radiates. This, in flip, offers perception into lightning initiation in a very highly effective sort of in-cloud lightning.

To arrive at this conclusion, the Los Alamos crew used machine studying to amass the most important dataset ever of trans-ionospheric pulse pairs (TIPPs), a really high-frequency radio sign generated by lightning. More than 76,000 TIPPs have been noticed by a radio frequency sensor developed by Los Alamos aboard a satellite tv for pc in geostationary orbit and matched to lightning noticed from the bottom. (An estimated 95% of the lightning occasions detected by radio frequency sensors are TIPPs, whereas the remaining are cloud-to-ground lightning discharges.)

“We’ve known for a long time that the first pulse of a TIPP is caused by the signal from the lightning directly reaching a satellite after traveling through the ionosphere, and the second pulse is caused by the signal reflecting off the Earth’s surface and then reaching the satellite,” stated Erin Lay, a analysis scientist at Los Alamos and lead Laboratory writer of the examine revealed within the Journal of Geophysics Research. “Sometimes this second pulse is stronger than the first, but we didn’t know why. This study showed us the difference is a result of the altitude of the lightning in the cloud and the elevation angle in relation to the satellite.”

The examine supplied further proof that TIPPs are the space-based signature of compact intracloud discharges, that are a very quick, brief in-cloud lightning course of.

The new, massive database of 76,000 TIPPs additionally has potential so as to add additional specificity to international lightning mapper (GLM) knowledge. These GLM devices on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-R satellites, together with the co-located superior baseline imager, give researchers an estimate of how excessive a cloud is, in line with Lay.

“Our measurements could lead to even more accurate measurements in time of how high the convective regions of clouds are, which can in turn help them verify their data,” Lay stated. “It could tell them, for example, that when they get a quick jump in altitude of the TIPPs, the storm’s convection could be changing rapidly.”

Paper: “Statistical Analysis of Trans-Ionospheric Pulse Pairs and Inferences on their Characteristics.” Journal of Geophysics Research: Atmospheres.

DOI: 10.1029/2025JD043403