资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Lightning activity, storm structures, meteorological and environmental conditions are analyzed within a large area of Central Africa (25° × 25°) for two periods of one month (March and December) with high thunderstorm activity in 2013. The lightning flashes issued from World-Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN) allow to contribute in highlighting some characteristics in agreement with the literature. Some new findings, that can be useful for future storm monitoring thanks to lightning data issued from the Lightning Imager (LI) onboard Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), have been noted and have to be confirmed with more case studies. Thus, a seasonal correlation is found between the daily flash number and the extent of large CAPE values. The lightning flash density exhibits the same location of its maximum, for December and March with about 3 and 2 flashes km⁻², respectively. This location is also reported in the literature for the annual activity in the study area. The storm developments often occur in the regions that combine the presence of lakes and mountains. The flash clusters allow to localize the strong convective activity and to follow the displacement of the storm systems when they move. The flash rate density (FRD) is larger in the convective systems well organized, as the typical MCS, during the development of the storms and when several cells merge. The daily cycle shows a lightning flash rate maximum between 14:00 and 15:00 UT that precedes the maximum development of the storm by one hour. It also shows that the storms that occur within the region of the main maximum of lightning activity, are more frequent and produce larger values of FRD.