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David Corredor

Publications and source records attributed to David Corredor.

4 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Evaluation of Present and Future Spaceborne Lightning Observations During the ALOFT Campaign

The ALOFT1 campaign took place during July 2023. The NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft was based in Tampa, Florida, and flew approximately 60 hours sampling tropical and sub-tropical thunderstorms that were mostly contained within the common fields of view of GLM4-16 and GLM-18. In addition, multiple underflights of the ISS LIS5 instrument occurred. The FEGS2 and LIP6 instrument suite on the ER-2 provided a combination of multispectral optical, slow and fast electric field change, and three-dimensional electric field measurements of lightning and thunderstorms. Notably, in addition to the 777-nm band used by GLM and LIS, FEGS also observed at 337 nm, 500 nm, 868 nm, wideband visible-to-infrared, and shortwave infrared. A spectrometer that spanned most major lightning bands from the ultraviolet to infrared was included. Observations of gamma-ray production by thunderstorms were also collected during ALOFT. Thus, the lightning-observing suite on the ER-2 during ALOFT provides an unprecedented suborbital dataset for direct optical-to-optical and indirect radio-to-optical validation of existing spaceborne lightning sensors like GLM and LIS. In addition, the multispectral observations from FEGS enables evaluation of current and future spaceborne lightning-observing concepts. For example, the 337-nm channel is relevant to both existing missions like ASIM7 as well as future concepts like the CubeSpark mission currently being formulated by NASA. Complementary to LIS, the ISS also carries the STP-H88 payload, which features microwave radiometers covering 18-182 GHz, while the ER-2 carried radiometers covering 10-684 GHz, enabling evaluation of spaceborne passive microwave measurements that are complementary to the lightning observations. 1. Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS2 and TGFs3 2. Fly’s Eye GLM4 Simulator 3. Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes 4. Geostationary Lightning Mapper 5. International Space Station Lightning Imaging Sensor 6. Lightning Instrument Package 7. Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor 8. 8th Space Test Program – Houston mission

Timothy Lang↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Precipitation Science at NASA MSFC

The Precipitation Research Group in NASA MSFC’s Earth Science Branch (ST-11) focuses on observations of precipitation (rain, snow, and hail) from a variety of perspectives: ground-based radars, surface gauge networks, airborne instruments, and spaceborne measurements from onboard satellites. Current work includes identifying signatures of hail and strong thunderstorms from spaceborne measurements and assessing those signatures against multiple satellite datasets and ground-based radar observations. The Precipitation Team is also involved in the development and maintenance of NASA’s global-gridded multi-satellite precipitation product (IMERG) and operating and maintaining the GPM Validation Network (VN): a software package that geometrically matches the reference ground-based weather radar observations with GPM satellite observations in 3D. The team is also responsible for the Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer (AMPR) used in airborne field campaign research, which recently was used to collect data on thunderstorms that produce terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) in the Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs (ALOFT) field campaign. While the Precipitation Group largely supports NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission and Precipitation Science Team, the team also looks to the future Precipitation Measurement Mission (PMM) and Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS) missions.

Sarah D Bang↗