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Thursday, November 15, 2018. 12:00 PM. Webinar: Initial Geostationary Lightning Mapper Observations. Scott Rudlosky, NESDIS/STAR/CoRP.  Sponsored by NOAA. More information.

The Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) is the first sensor of its kind, and this technological advancement now allows continuous operational monitoring of lightning on time and space scales never before available. This has led to a golden age of lightning observations, which will spur more rapid progress toward synthesis of these observations with other meteorological datasets and forecasting tools. This study documents the first nine months of GLM observations, illustrating that the GLM captures similar spatial patterns of lightning occurrence to many previous studies. The present study shows that GLM flashes are less common over the oceans, but that the oceanic flashes are larger, brighter, and last longer than flashes over land. The GLM characteristics also help diagnose and document data quality artifacts that diminish in time with tuning of the instrument and filters. The GLM presents profound possibilities, with countless new applications anticipated over the coming decades. The baseline values reported herein aim to guide the early development and application of the GLM observations.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Scott Rudlosky is a NOAA/NESDIS physical scientist in the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) Cooperative Research Program (CoRP). He is co-located with the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) in College Park, Maryland. Scott is the NESDIS Subject Matter Expert on lightning and science lead for the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM). He originally joined CICS as a Research Associate in January 2011 following completion of his M.S. (2007) and Ph.D. (2011) in Meteorology at Florida State University. He obtained his B.S. (2004) in Geography with a specialization in Atmospheric Science from Ohio State University.