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Lightning over Tibetan Plateau and its relation with winds associated with CAPE

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Abstract

Association of lightning with winds over Tibetan Plateau (TP) is examined by analyzing lightning data during the period 1999–2013. The study reveals that nearly 92% lightning activity occurred during April to September is associated with the wind circulation, especially cyclonic circulation. Nearly 58% of lightning is found to happen during May (18.6%), June (19.29%), and July (19.56%). Less vertical wind shear (less than 10 m/s) and high CAPE (more than 400 J/kg) are found to be associated with lightning. Analysis shows that negative correlation exists between wind shear and lightning. Results reveal that high wind shear tends to restrict the growth of convection, resulting in lightning. On annual scale, there exist negative correlation between lightning and wind shear and insignificant correlation between lightning and CAPE for April-September. However, a new relationship is established when CAPE and shear are taken together, and a strong positive correlation is found between lightning and CAPE per shear (CAPE/shear). Hence, we propose that for better understanding on lightning over Tibetan Plateau, it would be much more useful to consider CAPE/shear rather than CAPE or wind shear alone.

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Availability of data and materials

Lightning data are obtained from Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS; onboard TRMM), science data are considered from (https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/pub/lis/orbit_files/data/science/), and weather data such as wind, vertical pressure velocity (omega), specific humidity fraction, and surface elevation are obtained from reanalysis data sets of ERA-Interim, resolution 0.75° × 0.75° (http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=sfc/). Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) data are obtained from ERA-interim as well as University of Wyoming (http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html). All the above data are analyzed for the period 1999 to 2013 over TP region that fall between 27° to 36° N and 80° to 100° E.

Code availability (software application or custom code)

The authors used Origin 8.5, MATLAB R2014a (https://in.mathworks.com) and GrADS ver. 2.0 software (http://cola.gmu.edu/grads/) in the analysis of data.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to Director IITM, Pune, for providing all necessary facilities needed in the study. The authors are also thankful to NASA, MERRA, ERA-Interim, MODIS, and University of Wyoming, for providing valuable satellite, observational and modeled data. Author MKS is thankful to support of  ISRO-ARFI and BHU-IoE.

Funding

Although my institute is funded by Ministry of Earth Science, as an individual the authors of this manuscript do not get any fund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pashan, Pune, 411008, India

    Deen Mani Lal, Mata Mahakur, Venkatachalam Gopalakrishnan, Sachin Dinkar Ghude & Sunil Dnyandeo Pawar

  2. Department of Geophysics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

    Manoj Kr. Srivastava

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  1. Deen Mani Lal
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Contributions

DML conceived the study, performed the analysis, and prepared the manuscript. All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by MM, VG, MKS, SDG, and SDP. The first draft of the manuscript was written by DML, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Deen Mani Lal.

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Lal, D.M., Mahakur, M., Gopalakrishnan, V. et al. Lightning over Tibetan Plateau and its relation with winds associated with CAPE. Meteorol Atmos Phys 134, 93 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-022-00930-5

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