Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2021

Presentation information

[E] Poster

M (Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary) » M-IS Intersection

[M-IS07] Effects of lightning, severe weather and tropical storms

Sat. Jun 5, 2021 5:15 PM - 6:30 PM Ch.21

convener:Mitsuteru Sato(Department of Cosmoscience, Hokkaido University), Hisayuki Kubota(Hokkaido University), C. Glenn Vincent Lopez(---), Purwadi Purwadi(Department of Cosmosciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 0600810, Japan)

5:15 PM - 6:30 PM

[MIS07-P01] Lightning bursts observed during the tropical cyclone genesis over the Philippine Sea

*Hisayuki Kubota1, Yukihiro Takahashi1, Mitsuteru Sato1 (1.Hokkaido University)

Keywords:Tropical cyclone, Lightning, Philippine Sea

The accuracy of tropical cyclone (TC) track forecast has been improved year by years, on the other hand, the forecast of tropical cyclone intensity still has a difficulty of improvement. Recently the relationship between lightning activity and tropical cyclone intensity has been investigated. Lightning tends to increase during the rapid intensification of the TC. Therefore, monitoring the lightning activity becomes important for a TC intensity forecast. Lightning observation network are deployed over the western north Pacific by five very long frequency events trigger measurements called V-POTEKA at Palau, Guam, Manila Philippines, Okinawa Japan and Serpong Indonesia under the ULAT (Understanding Lightning and Thunderstorm) of SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development) in the Philippines.

Lightning activity was drastically increased around the TC during the TC genesis stage of tropical storm Maysak on 28 August 2020. Numbers of lightning reached the maximum during the life cycle of the TC. Location of lightnings were concentrated near the center of TC in about 100 to 200 km radius. Convective clouds reached less than 190K of blackbody temperature near the center of the TC. We called this phenomenon as “lightning burst”. It seems that lightning burst is associated with the convective burst which tends to occur during the TC genesis stage. About half of TCs observed lightning bursts during the TC genesis stage over the Philippine Sea in 2020. We will investigate further what kind of structure occurred during the lightning burst and what kind of mechanism responsible for the lightning burst.