The possibility of rainfall nowcasting using atmospheric electric field

The possibility of rainfall nowcasting using a new parameter — atmospheric electric field (potential gradient, PG) — is investigated. The temporal behavior of the PG measured by a ground-based electric field mill before rainfall was analyzed at the University of Reading Atmospheric Observatory (51.441°N, 0.938°W, 66 m) in 2007–2021 and the Nor Amberd research station (40.367°N, 45.258°E, 2000 m) in 2013–2018. The PG tend to show abnormal oscillations before the precipitation cloud arrived at the PG measuring site. Several rules were applied to determine rainfall and PG oscillation events. Statistical analysis was conducted, and the results showed that PG oscillations occurred before and overlap with 48% (54%) of rainfall events, and PG oscillations occurred in one hour before 68% (77%) of rainfall events started at the University of Reading Atmospheric Observatory site (Nor Amberd research station site). A PG-based rainfall nowcasting model is proposed, which is constructed using machine learning techniques Fully Connected Neural Network and Tree-based Pipeline Optimization Tool. The hit rate, false alarm rate, missed detection rate, TS score of the model reached 93.8% (94.6%), 36% (37.4%), 37.7% (39.3%), 46.1% (44.5%) respectively, which is comparable to that of the state-of-the-art rainfall nowcasting methods. And the heavy rainfall hit rate reached 41.5% (36.4%). PG show a great potential to be used as a new parameter for rainfall nowcasting. And the effect of rainfall nowcasting method that proposed in this paper is barely affected by the weather conditions and the PG measuring range of different sites. Moreover, PG stands out among many other parameters because long-term and stable PG measurements can be obtained at a very low cost using an electric field mill.