Parameterizing total storm conduction currents derived in a global model

Electrified clouds are thought to play a major role in the global electric circuit. These clouds produce currents from the top of thunderstorms which help maintain the potential difference between earth's surface and the upper atmosphere. Previously, currents for different types of electrified clouds were estimated from overflights of the NASA ER-2 aircraft and compared with radar derived dynamical and microphysical properties (Deierling et al., this conference). In this study, high resolution model output from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) is compared with reanalysis data to determine the skill of CESM at representing these microphysical and dynamical properties of storms. Then, these storm properties are used to infer global distributions of conduction currents over different temporal scales and compared with data derived from the lightning imaging sensor (LIS) and precipitation radar (PR) measurements onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.