Dynamical features of GPS PWV variation associated with lightning activity

ABSTRACT

Water vapour is one component that causes spatial and temporal fluctuations in the lower atmosphere, which, in turn, introduce time delays into the global positioning system (GPS) signal. These delays can be exploited to estimate the precipitable water vapour (PWV), which is beneficial for meteorological applications. Because the vertical transfer of warm air to the troposphere triggers instability and atmospheric charges, lightning phenomena can fundamentally affect the GPS signals through changes in water vapour. From this hypothesis, GPS-derived PWV data have been proposed as a tool for monitoring lightning activity. In this paper, the variation of PWV in days with lightning at four selected stations in Peninsular Malaysia during the past two inter-monsoon events in May and November 2009 was observed. To verify the response, a peak alignment method was proposed with regard to the lightning with more than 100 discharge events and lightning days from 07:00 to 20:00 LT. A total of 66 lightning series were assessed, and PWV was observed to increase by approximately 2.46 mm and decrease by 4.16 mm before and after the peak point, respectively, when compared to fair-weather conditions. Approximately 62% of the lightning start times were concentrated within a period of less than 1 h before or after the PWV reached a maximum peak, 24% were observed between 1–2 h, and 14% started after 2 h. This trend implies that the use of GPS PWV data was more consistent and robust for the detection of lightning activity compared to the use of surface temperature and relative humidity data.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia (DIDM) for providing rainfall data, the MetMalaysia for lightning and meteorological data, as well as the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (DSMM) for supporting the GPS data. Our gratitude is also extended to anonymous reviewers and journal’s editors for their invaluable and generous comments that significantly improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by UKM-GGPM-ICT-122-2010 grant and partially supported by ZF-2014-016 grant.