Observing relationships between lightning and cloud profiles by means of a satellite-borne cloud radar

Cloud electrification and related lightning activity in thunderstorms have their origin in the charge separation and resulting distribution of charged iced particles within the cloud. So far, the ice distribution within convective clouds has been investigated mainly by means of ground-based me- teorological radars. In this paper we show how the prod- ucts from Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) on board CloudSat, a polar satellite of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP), can be used to obtain information from space on the vertical distribution of ice particles and ice content and relate them to the lightning activity. The analysis has been carried out, focusing on 12 convective events over Italy that crossed CloudSat overpasses during significant lightning ac- tivity. The CPR products considered here are the vertical profiles of cloud ice water content (IWC) and the effective radius (ER) of ice particles, which are compared with the number of strokes as measured by a ground lightning net- work (LINET). Results show a strong correlation between the number of strokes and the vertical distribution of ice par- ticles as depicted by the 94 GHz CPR products: in particular, cloud upper and middle levels, high IWC content and rela- tively high ER seem to be favourable contributory causes for CG (cloud to ground) stroke occurrence.