NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 20150001357: Database Design for the Evaluation of On-shore and Off-Shore Storm Characteristics over East Central Florida

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by  NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Database Design for the Evaluation of On-shore and Off-shore
Storm Characteristics over East Central Florida
Amy A. Simpson, Jennifer G. Wilson, Robert G. Brown
NASA KSC, Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA
• Database to The KSC Lightning Research Database (KLRD) was created to
investigate lightning characteristics over differing terrain as well as reduce manual
data entry time and combine information from various data sources into a single
record for unique lightning events of interest.
• The KLRD contains data from over 170 unique storms (January –September 2014)
and provides the following capabilities:
Ground and ocean instrumentation locations • Imports data from a lightning detection network and identifies and records lighting events of interest. Jan-Sep 2014 lightning events selected by inland,
near-shore, ocean, and deep ocean locations
• Imports data from NASA Buoys 41009 and 41010 and the KSC Electric Field Mill network, then matches
these electric field mill values to the corresponding lightning events.
• Calculates distances between each lightning event and the various electric field mills.
• Aids in identifying the location type for each stroke and provides statistics on the number of strokes per flash.
• Allows for customized searches and reports.
Field Mill
Slow Antenna
Polarity by location
NASA/NOAA Buoy 41009 (20 nm off KSC coast) &
41010 (120 nm off KSC coast) instrumentation set-up
Top 10 Peak Current (Ip) Values
Negative Positive
Ip Location Ip Location
‐287.2Deep Ocean 126.9Deep Ocean
‐240.9Deep Ocean 107.2Deep Ocean
‐240.3Deep Ocean 103.6Near‐Shore
‐237.4Deep Ocean 103.5Near‐Shore
‐218.0Deep Ocean 97.1Deep Ocean
‐215.6Deep Ocean 96.1Deep Ocean
‐190.0Deep Ocean 95.9Deep Ocean
‐189.1Deep Ocean 95.6Deep Ocean
‐187.7Deep Ocean 90.2Ocean
‐186.5Deep Ocean 90.1Deep Ocean
Peak current (I) by location
p
Campbell Scientific CS110 Electric Field Meter used on
NASA Buoys 41009 and 41010
Average Multiplicity
Inland 2.89
Near-Shore 3.08
Ocean 3.04
Major Findings to Date Deep Ocean 2.99
1. The largest positive and negative I in the samples to date originate over the
p
ocean.
2. Higher E-fields occur over ocean during active lightning as compared to on-shore
E-fields using the same criteria.
3. No statistical difference was found for polarity by terrain.
One of 31 Thunderstorm Technologies' Electric Field 4. No statistical difference was found for multiplicity by terrain.
mills in the KSC ground network used for this study Multiplicity by location
Acknowledgments
The Authors would like to thank DARPA for sponsoring this project, NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center and NASA’s KSC Ground Systems Division Electrical Branchfor all of the design and integration that made this deployment possible.