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OTD Observations of Continental US Ground and Cloud FlashesLightning optical flash parameters (e.g., radiance, area, duration, number of optical groups, and number of optical events) derived from almost five years of Optical Transient Detector (OTD) data are analyzed. Hundreds of thousands of OTD flashes occurring over the continental US are categorized according to flash type (ground or cloud flash) using US National Lightning Detection Network TM (NLDN) data. The statistics of the optical characteristics of the ground and cloud flashes are inter-compared on an overall basis, and as a function of ground flash polarity. A standard two-distribution hypothesis test is used to inter-compare the population means of a given lightning parameter for the two flash types. Given the differences in the statistics of the optical characteristics, it is suggested that statistical analyses (e.g., Bayesian Inference) of the space-based optical measurements might make it possible to successfully discriminate ground and cloud flashes a reasonable percentage of the time.
Document ID
20070038268
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Koshak, William
(National Space Science and Technology Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
August 13, 2007
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Meeting Information
Meeting: 13th International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity
Location: Beijing
Country: China
Start Date: August 13, 2007
End Date: August 17, 2007
Sponsors: International Committee on Atmospheric Electricity
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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