Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2021

Exhibitors' information

ULAT-SATREPS Understanding Lightning and Thunderstorms Project

(1) Overall Goal
To save human life and to mitigate the damage of social infrastructures from extreme weather in Metropolitan Manila and other urban areas in the Philippines.
(2) Project Purpose
Establishing the methodology of the nowcast for local extreme weathers and the way of its alert to the public based on the dense and nation-wide lightning observation networks which will be constructed in this project and the precise on-demand measurement of thunderstorms with satellites.

(3) Outputs
1. Establishment of methodologies for real-time lightning and meteorological observation in Metropolitan Manila, and nationwide lightning monitoring.
2. Establishment of satellite utilization for extreme weather monitoring, including design and operation of future microsatellites.
3. Establishment of methodologies for nowcast of extreme weather and lightning activity.
4 . Establishment of alert or warning system, a way of social implementation for issuing alert to the public on disasters associated with extreme weather, such as torrential rainfall, fash food, tornado, landslide, thunderbolts to person, electrical outage, network failure, a fire caused by thunderbolts.
(4) Project Activities
1. Constructing 2 kinds of observation networks and their real-time reporting system.
a) Dense observation network (0.5-3 km interval, ~20-100 sites) consisting of electric field and meteorological sensors covering Metropolitan Manila, which provides intimate information of thunderstorm development and its activity with a resolution of 0.5-3 km, including electrical discharge, torrential rainfall, gust front, etc.
b) Nation-wide lightning geolocation system (~200 km interval, ~10 sites), which provides background conditions of local phenomena in
Metropolitan Manila with a middle spatial resolution of ~10 km covering nationwide area.
2. Establishing the 3-D reconstruction of a thunderstorm by on-demand operation of satellites, making use of data obtained by existing
meteorological satellites and micro-satellites, such as RISING-2, and UNIFORM-1, and planned future micro-satellites, such as PHL-Microsat (Diwata) and RISESAT, which will be launched in a couple of years by
the Philippines and by Hokkaido University and/or other universities/institutes in Japan. In order to achieve it, the ground station will be built in this project.
3. Establishing the methodology of short-term prediction for extreme weather and lightning activity in Metro Manila, extrapolating data obtained by the networks constructed in this project, satellites, and
existing ground facilities including weather radars. To do this, the relationship between tropical cyclones and localized extreme weathers/lightning is examined with data recorded in the Philippines for long period.
4. Developing a public alert system of various disasters related to extreme weather with SMS or application of smartphone, based on the heritage of alert system, which has been developed and operated by DOST (PAGASA).