The Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center (GHRC) DAAC presented its annual Earthdata webinar titled, “Lightning in a Flash: Using Cloud and Open Source Capabilities to Improve Data Access and Analysis.” The presentation introduced attendees to the role of all of the DAACs and GHRC specifically. From there, the talk highlighted GHRC’s lightning holdings and what makes lightning data of interest to the community. With this, the Lightning Dashboard was introduced, demonstrating GHRC’s efforts to better support the lightning community and apply its cloud expertise. Initial feedback from attendees was very positive. The full recording will be available once provided to GHRC. In the meantime, the slide deck can be found at https://go.nasa.gov/44s495a. Additionally, GHRC’s Lightning Dashboard can be found at https://ghrc.earthdata.nasa.gov/lightdash/index.html.
The Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center (GHRC) DAAC has successfully published the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) Level 3 gridded products dataset. This publication is significant for several reasons. First, this is the culmination of effort to archive these data that came out of a previous GLM science team meeting. Additionally, the GLM Level 3 data will serve as an excellent companion dataset to GHRC’s existing lightning data, particularly the International Space Station Lightning Imaging Sensor. The main milestone with this publication is that it represents the first ever end-to-end cloud publication of an ongoing dataset. In other words, the entire process, from data ingest, metadata extraction, to publication, exclusively used GHRC’s cloud-based workflow. Additionally, as an ongoing dataset, new data arrives daily and will continue to use this cloud-based workflow. The GLM Level 3 data are a great addition to GHRC’s lightning holdings and the cloud-only approach demonstrates GHRC’s latest steps to become a cloud-only DAAC.
The Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center (GHRC) DAAC has completed archiving all datasets for the Convective Processes Experiment - Aerosols and Wind (CPEX-AW) field campaign. This clears the way to wrap up the older CPEX campaign that GHRC has received data for and to prepare for the incoming CPEX-Cabo Verde data.
The Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center (GHRC) DAAC scientist traveled to participate in the final week of the Lake Effect Electrification (LEE) field campaign in Oswego, New York. Serving as one of the PIs for this National Science Foundation funded project, he supported the balloon team responsible for launching electric field mills and particle imagers into the snow bands. The LEE campaign running from November 2022 through the first week of February 2023 was designed to investigate the electrification characteristics of lake effect snowstorms coming off of Lake Ontario. There is particular interest with this in the Tug Hill region east of Lake Ontario, which supports a large wind farm and a better understanding of which snow bands will generate lightning will help protect the wind turbines. From the DAAC perspective, the LEE campaign has ties to the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) campaign. While the LEE data will be archived by the National Science Foundation, GHRC (hosting IMPACTS) is using this as an opportunity to discuss potential ways to enable cross-agency data referencing.
