Precipitation charge and size measurements inside a New Mexico mountain thunderstorm

Abstract

We measured the charge and size of precipitation particles with an instrumented free balloon in a convective mountain thunderstorm over Langmuir Laboratory in central New Mexico. Using an instrument that measured precipitation charge from 2 to 220 pC and equivalent particle diameters from 0.6 to 3.8 mm, we deduced that (1) the charge of the main positive charge region is carried by cloud particles, the charge of the main negative charge region is carried by a mixture of negative charge bearing cloud particles and precipitation particles, and the charge of the lower positive charge region is carried almost entirely by precipitation; (2) there was a mixture of both polarities of precipitation charge at nearly all altitudes; (3) there was no relationship between precipitation charge and size; (4) our charge data appear to support the noninductive ice-ice collisional charging mechanism; and (5) the sign of charge carried by the precipitation reverses with ambient temperature. In comparing these data to previous measurements that were collected in New Mexico mountain thunderstorms with different instrumentation, we found that in most ways our precipitation charge data are similar to the previous measurements. In comparing these data with data that we previously collected in the trailing stratiform regions of mesoscale convective systems, we found that there are substantial differences in the precipitation charge data between these different cloud types. Copyright 1999 by the American Geophysical Union.