Assessing the Lifetime Performance of the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS): Implications for the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM)

The Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite has been providing observations of total lightning over the Earth s Tropics for 13 years. This study examines the performance of the LIS throughout its time in orbit. Application of the Deep Convective Cloud Technique (DCCT) (Doelling et al., 2004) was performed on the LIS background pixels to assess the stability of the LIS instrument. The DCCT analysis indicates that the maximum deviation of the monthly mean radiance is within 2% of the overall mean, indicating stable performance over the period. In addition, an examination of the number of flashes detected over time similarly shows no significant trend (after adjusting for the orbit boost that occurred in August 2001). These and other results indicate that there has been no discernible change in LIS performance throughout its lifetime. A similar approach will used for monitoring the performance of the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) onboard the next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R). Since GLM is based on LIS design heritage, the LIS results indicate that GLM may also experience stable performance over its lifetime

Initial Results from the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the International Space Station (ISS) and Comparison with Observations from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) LIS

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Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the International Space Station (ISS): Path to Attaining Level 1 Science Requirements and Early Results in Year One

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Global Lightning Statistics from Two Years of Science Observations by the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the International Space Station (ISS)

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Observations of Lightning on Earth from the Lunar Surface

The NASA Optical Transient Detector (OTD) launched into a 70deg inclination orbit in April 1995 aboard the MicroLab-1 satellite and the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) launched into a 35deg inclination orbit in November 1997 (and still operating today) aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission have produced the most comprehensive global observations of lightning activity on Earth. The OTD collected data for 5-yr from an altitude of 740 km while the LIS, in its 10th year of operations, is still collecting data from its current altitude of 402 km. From these altitudes the OTD observes an individual storm within its field of view for approx.3 min and the LIS for approx.90 sec as the satellites orbit the earth. Figures 1-4 show the combined LIS/OTD distribution of lightning for day and night during the Northern Hemisphere warm season from April through August (Fig. 1,2) and the cool season from October through February (Fig. 3,4) as might be observed from the lunar surface (12-h daylight and 12-h nighttime observations). The day and night plots are for the twelve hour periods centered on local noon and midnight. The total viewtime of the global lightning activity is 200 hours or less, depending on latitude (Fig. 5). Most of the observed lightning occurs over the northern hemisphere land areas as reported in previous studies. More lightning activity is seen at the higher northern latitudes during the day. The greatest lightning maxima occurs in the southeastern US, during the day. The corresponding region at night shows much less lightning activity. In contrast, there is a maxima in lightning activity at night over the high Plains area of the U.S. This region had lower lightning rates during the daytime period. During the cold season, the southern hemisphere has significantly more lightning. The maxima in Central Africa is still present, and a secondary maxima is observed in South Africa. In South America, the maxima in Argentina occurs at night in association with large-scale mesoscale convective storm complexes. This is the region on the earth having the greatest frequency of extreme storms with flash rates exceeding 1000 flashes/min. daytime maxima is seen extending from Northern Argentina to Brazil. In the US., the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Coast states exhibit a maximum in lightning activity both day and night

Disorder-induced magnetic memory: Experiments and theories

Beautiful theories of magnetic hysteresis based on random microscopic disorder have been developed over the past ten years. Our goal was to directly compare these theories with precise experiments. We first developed and then applied coherent x-ray speckle metrology to a series of thin multilayer perpendicular magnetic materials. To directly observe the effects of disorder, we deliberately introduced increasing degrees of disorder into our films. We used coherent x-rays to generate highly speckled magnetic scattering patterns. The apparently random arrangement of the speckles is due to the exact configuration of the magnetic domains in the sample. In effect, each speckle pattern acts as a unique fingerprint for the magnetic domain configuration. Small changes in the domain structure change the speckles, and comparison of the different speckle patterns provides a quantitative determination of how much the domain structure has changed. How is the magnetic domain configuration at one point on the major hysteresis loop related to the configurations at the same point on the loop during subsequent cycles? The microscopic return-point memory(RPM) is partial and imperfect in the disordered samples, and completely absent when the disorder was not present. We found the complementary-point memory(CPM) is also partial and imperfect in the disordered samples and completely absent when the disorder was not present. We found that the RPM is always a little larger than the CPM. We also studied the correlations between the domains within a single ascending or descending loop. We developed new theoretical models that do fit our experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 25 figures, Accepted by Physical Review B 01/25/0

The 13 years of TRMM Lightning Imaging Sensor: From Individual Flash Characteristics to Decadal Tendencies

How often lightning strikes the Earth has been the object of interest and research for decades. Several authors estimated different global flash rates using ground-based instruments, but it has been the satellite era that enabled us to monitor lightning thunderstorm activity on the time and place that lightning exactly occurs. Launched into space as a component of NASA s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, in November 1997, the Lighting Imaging Sensor (LIS) is still operating. LIS detects total lightning (i.e., intracloud and cloud-to-ground) from space in a low-earth orbit (35deg orbit). LIS has collected lightning measurements for 13 years (1998-2010) and here we present a fully revised and current total lightning climatology over the tropics. Our analysis includes the individual flash characteristics (number of events and groups, total radiance, area footprint, etc.), composite climatological maps, and trends for the observed total lightning during these 13 years. We have identified differences in the energetics of the flashes and/or the optical scattering properties of the storms cells due to cell-relative variations in microphysics and kinematics (i.e., convective or stratiform rainfall). On the climatological total lightning maps we found a dependency on the scale of analysis (resolution) in identifying the lightning maximums in the tropics. The analysis of total lightning trends observed by LIS from 1998 to 2010 in different temporal (annual and seasonal) and spatial (large and regional) scales, showed no systematic trends in the median to lower-end of the distributions, but most places in the tropics presented a decrease in the highest total lightning flash rates (higher-end of the distributions)

Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) for the International Space Station (ISS): Mission Description and Science Goals

In recent years, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and their partners have developed and demonstrated space-based lightning observations as an effective remote sensing tool for Earth science research and applications. The Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) continues to provide global observations of total lightning after 17 years on-orbit. In April 2013, a space-qualified LIS built as the flight spare for TRMM, was selected for flight as a science mission on the International Space Station. The ISS LIS (or I-LIS as Hugh Christian prefers) will be flown as a hosted payload on the Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP) H5 mission, which has a January 2016 baseline launch date aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle for a 2-4 year or longer mission. The LIS measures the amount, rate, and radiant energy of global lightning. More specifically, it measures lightning during both day and night, with storm scale resolution, millisecond timing, and high, uniform detection efficiency, without any land-ocean bias. Lightning is a direct and most impressive response to intense atmospheric convection. It has been found that the characteristics of lightning that LIS measures can be quantitatively coupled to both thunderstorm and other geophysical processes. Therefore, the ISS LIS lightning observations will provide important gap-filling inputs to pressing Earth system science issues across a broad range of disciplines, including weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and lightning physics. A unique contribution from the ISS platform will be the availability of real-time lightning, especially valuable for operational applications over data sparse regions such as the oceans. The ISS platform will also uniquely enable LIS to provide simultaneous and complementary observations with other payloads such as the European Space Agency's Atmosphere-Space Interaction Monitor (ASIM) that will be exploring the connection between thunderstorms and lightning with terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs). Another important function of the ISS LIS will be to provide cross-sensor calibration/validation with a number of other payloads, including the TRMM LIS and the next generation geostationary lightning mappers (e.g., GOES-R Geostationary Lightning Mapper and Meteosat Third Generation Lightning Imager). This inter-calibration will improve the long term climate monitoring provided by all these systems. Finally, the ISS LIS will extend the time-series climate record of LIS lightning observations and expand the latitudinal coverage of LIS lightning to the climate significant upper middle-latitudes

Disorder-induced microscopic magnetic memory

Using coherent x-ray speckle metrology, we have measured the influence of disorder on major loop return point memory (RPM) and complementary point memory (CPM) for a series of perpendicular anisotropy Co/Pt multilayer films. In the low disorder limit, the domain structures show no memory with field cycling--no RPM and no CPM. With increasing disorder, we observe the onset and the saturation of both the RPM and the CPM. These results provide the first direct ensemble-sensitive experimental study of the effects of varying disorder on microscopic magnetic memory and are compared against the predictions of existing theories.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters in Nov. 200

Combined Cisplatinum and Laser Thermal Therapy for Palliation of Recurrent Head and Neck Tumors

In recent years endoscopically controlled laser-induced thermal therapy (LITT) has been increasingly accepted as a minimally invasive method for palliation of advanced or recurrent head and neck or gastrointestinal cancer. Previous studies have shown that adjuvant chemotherapy can potentiate endoscopic laser thermal ablation of obstructing tumors leading to improved palliation in advanced cancer patients. Eight patients with recurrent head and neck tumors volunteered to enroll as part of an ongoing phase II LITT clinical trial, and also elected to be treated with systemic chemotherapy (cisplatin, 80 mg/m2) followed 24 h later by palliative laser thermal ablation. Laser treatments were repeated in patients with residual disease or recurrence for a total of 27 LITT sessions. Four of the 8 patients treated with laser thermal chemotherapy remained alive after a median follow-up of 12 months. Of the 12 tumor sites treated, complete responses were located in the oral cavity (3), oropharynx (1), hypopharynx (1), maxillary sinus (1), and median survival for these patients was 9.5 months. This initial experience with cisplatinum-based laser chemotherapy indicates both safety and therapeutic potential for palliation of advanced head and neck cancer but this must be confirmed by longer follow-up in a larger cohort of patients