NSF Award
2407428
Lightning on its own is spectacular, dangerous, and costly. Despite its importance, basic questions about how it initiates in clouds, how it expands, how it makes contact with objects, and what conditions are most likely to lead to dangerous lightning remain at best only partly answered. This project will develop a comprehensive observing system using radio and optical wavelengths to measure and image lightning flash development in fundamentally new ways with high resolution in both time and space. The uniquely comprehensive capabilities of the instrument will enable it to answer open questions about lightning itself, to address key questions about the links between lightning and atmospheric science more broadly, and to improve the ability to predict and mitigate its impact. The instrument is also designed to be available to a broad user base and for the data to be shared as widely as possible to help train the next generation of scientists in the field.<br/><br/>This project will design and deliver a uniquely capable multi-modality radio and optical lightning imager to be used by the broader atmospheric physics and electricity community to probe many facets of the structure and physics of lightning that are inaccessible to existing instrumentation. The guiding principle behind the concept that the measurement capabilities needed to address the most important questions in lightning and lightning-atmosphere coupling are not yet available because existing instruments generally lack the ability to combine high quality radio imaging with quantitative measurements of the internal physics of different lightning processes. The instrument is composed of 4 subsystems that operate together: a reconfigurable multiband VHF-UHF lightning imaging radio interferometer; a 6-band optical photometer; an ultra- broadband (150 MHz–5 GHz) single channel antenna; and a multi-field low frequency (100 Hz–20 MHz) electric and magnetic field sensor. The individual subsystems are highly capable on their own, but when integrated they create an instrument capable of fundamentally new measurements that will impact areas that span from the internal physics of lightning to the impact of lightning on large scale atmospheric chemistry and climate change.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
