A Severe Storm Warning System based in Radar and Satellite Data Available to Purchase

This study describes an operation tool for severe storm nowcasting using GOES satellite images and cloud‐ground lightning data. A relationship was established between atmospheric discharges and penetrative convective clouds, combining Infrared and Water Vapor channels from the GOES‐10 geostationary satellite with cloud‐ground lightning data from the Brazilian Integrated Lightning Detection Network (RINDAT). The difference between water vapor and infrared brightness temperature is a tracer of penetrating clouds in the stratosphere. From this difference and the cloud‐ground electrical discharge, it was possible to adjust exponential curves that relate this brightness temperature difference to the probability of occurrence of cloud‐ground electrical discharges, with a very high coefficient of determination. These structures of penetrative clouds are followed in the time using an operational algorithm called ForTraCC (forecasting and tracking cloud cluster). This system allows extrapolating the penetrative clouds up to 120 minutes. Besides, others severity parameters were studied like the kernel of minimum cloud top temperature and the area expansion. All these information are combined in a Web based Geographic Information System called SIGMA (Geographic Information System Applied to the Environmental). This system is a useful tool to interpret and integrate the environmental informs and sends warning for emergency management groups (by e‐mail or SMS).