AE010-01
Lightning observations with the Long Wavelength Array in Sevilleta, New Mexico (LWA-SV)

Thursday, 10 December 2020: 05:30
Virtual
Julia Tilles1, Ningyu Liu2, Jayce Dowell3, Greg B Taylor3, Paul G. Clem1, Harald E Edens4, Richard Sonnenfeld5 and Caitano L. da Silva6, (1)Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, United States, (2)University of New Hampshire, Department of Physics and Space Science Center, Durham, NH, United States, (3)University of New Mexico Main Campus, Physics and Astronomy, Albuquerque, NM, United States, (4)New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Department of Physics and Langmuir Laboratory, Socorro, NM, United States, (5)Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, Socorro, NM, United States, (6)New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, Socorro, NM, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Lightning observations using small (three-element) high-speed radio interferometers have enabled studies of the fast (microsecond-scale) processes associated with lightning initiation and lightning propagation [Rison et al., Nat. Commun., 7, 10721, 2016; Stock et al, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 122, 8135-8152, 2017; Tilles et al., Nat. Commun. 10, 1648, 2019]. Meanwhile, a new generation of large radio arrays, with some hundreds of sensing elements, were developed by the astronomy community to study increasingly transient phenomena, and can be used to map/image lightning with increasingly fine (meter-scale) spatial resolution [Hare et al., Nature, 568, 2019]. Here we present high-speed radio observations of lightning using the Long Wavelength Array in Sevilleta, New Mexico (LWA-SV), which consists of 256 dual-polarization antennas arranged within a roughly 100-meter diameter, and covers the frequencies 3-88 MHz. Designed with transient radio events in mind, the LWA-SV has a lightning trigger that can instantaneously capture all 256 dual-polarization measurements for 250 ms and 40 MHz bandwidth. We developed an algorithm to image lightning with the LWA-SV at sub-microsecond resolution, and can image multi-source/extended-source lightning emitters.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

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