Projects

Ongoing
Ongoing Projects
SEP 2022 – SEP 2025

Integrative Analysis of Aerosol Effects on Convective Cloud and the Associated Lightning Characteristics Based on Satellite Retrieval, WRF Modeling, and Machine Learning

Team Members

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Dr Gu Yu University of Los Angeles, USA

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Dr Lin Yun University of Los Angeles, USA
Dr Timothy Logan Texas A&M University, USA
Dr Wang Jingyu NIE

Funding Agency

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA

Project Description

By combining satellite data analysis, machine learning technique, and modeling approach, this project will advance our understanding of the long-term impacts of aerosols on convective clouds and lightning through various mechanisms. Understanding aerosol impacts on lightning characteristics such as IC/CG ratio and the fractions of positive CG flash, which contribute to the wildfire ignition and ground damages, is important for the precisely and timely forecast of dangerous lightning flashes.

While we focus on the middle/south central U.S., a typical active thunderstorm region, the integrative analysis proposed herein can be applied to other urban systems. The proposed study is integrated multi-disciplinary in scope by requiring subject-matter knowledge of meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, aerosol-cloud interactions to further NASA’s goals to understand the underlying causality of change through determination of the specific physical processes and mechanisms.