Meteosat third generation lightning imager, a review of future operational applications at cnmca

The next generation of EUMETSAT geostationary meteorological satellites, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), will bring in orbit the instrument for optical lightning detection, the Lightning Imager (LI). The LI mission is intended to provide a real time total lightning detection with accurate location capability, for the individuation, surveillance and short term forecast of atmospheric electrical hazards. As lightning is strongly correlated with intensive convection a further objective of the LI mission is to serve as proxy for storm related phenomena like precipitation, hail and gust. Lightning detection can also serve as proxy for adiabatic and latent heating to be assimilated in NWP models. Finally, lightning plays a significant role in atmospheric chemistry, e.g. generating nitric oxide, so that observing for long periods one of the sources of atmospheric chemical species may contribute to understand the behaviour of climate related variable. In the paper is described the first study phase for preparatory activities related to the future exploitation of LI data into the operational environment at the Centro Nazionale di Meteorologia e Climatologia Aeronautica (CNMCA), the Italian Air Force National Weather Centre; Nowcasting and Very Short Range Forecast are underlined, designing how it will be planned the full exploitation of real-time data streaming in that operational centre, and presumably in other analogous centres. The study is partly developed in the context of the University of Rome - Tor Vergata - Doctoral School in Engineering.