Learning from Lightning

To this end, a collective goal of researchers under the lead of Dr. Hugh Christian at NASA and the Global Hydrology and Climate Center (GHCC) in Huntsville, Ala., is to place a lightning sensor in geosynchronous orbit so that scientists can monitor storms over their entire life cycles. This sensor, called the Lightning Mapper Sensor (LMS), "would essentially rotate with the Earth," giving it a constant view of storms, Boccippio says.

"The end applications goal," says Boccippio, "is to improve real-time forecasting. ... It is the rapid updates that forecasters are excited about."

Measuring lightning from space is relatively simple and inexpensive. The satellites have some fancy optics, but Boccippio says they are "essentially glorified digital video cameras."

One of their unique characteristics is the ability to detect lightning during the day when the human eye cannot sense it. Furthermore, because of lightning's "impulsive, event-based" nature, the data sets are relatively small in size. The promise is that the data will be easier to deal with and to distribute to users.

The Lightning Team has already successfully developed and flown two optical lightning detectors. The first was the Optical Transient Detector (OTD). This "large-scale climatology instrument" collected a five-year record of lightning observations between April 1995 and April 2000.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was launched in November 1997 and has been providing high-resolution images and rainfall measurements for the tropics between roughly 35 degrees north and south latitudes. TRMM carries five unique sensory instruments, including the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) that enables scientists to study the distribution and variability of global lightning.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was launched in November 1997 and has been providing high-resolution images and rainfall measurements for the tropics between roughly 35 degrees north and south latitudes. TRMM carries five unique sensory instruments, including the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) that enables scientists to study the distribution and variability of global lightning.