Lightning activity and its associations with cloud structures in a rainstorm yielding extreme precipitation

It is the data associated with the figures in the paper titiled "Lightning activity and its associations with cloud structures in a rainstorm yielding extreme precipitation" which is being in the process of submission. The following is the abstract of this paper. Lightning activity and its associations with cloud structures during a rainstorm dominated by warm cloud precipitation were studied in Guangdong, China on 7 May 2017, using three-dimensional lightning location and polarimetric radar data. The overall convection and lightning activities of the rainstorm were weak. The rainstorm generally showed a typical tripolar charge structure with the main negative charge core between about –15 and –8 °C levels in the first 4 hours, and the height of the charge regions was clearly decreased afterwards, with the main negative charge core being below approximately –8 °C level. The lightning discharges were more concentrated in areas featuring relatively weak convection and relatively low precipitation intensity. Most of the positions with lightning discharges were dominated by the dry aggregated snow and weak updrafts and downdrafts. The investigation showed that the lightning discharges spatially deviated from the charging origin area in this rainstorm. It was suggested that, with the weak convection in the rainstorm, the charging speed was slower than the speed of charge transfer from the origin area, causing relatively low charge density and then the low frequency of lightning in the charging origin area. Meanwhile, the aggregation of small charged particles in the regions away from the charging origin area might be conducive to the form of relatively large charge density and therefore the relatively frequent lightning flashes. This situation is different from a typical thunderstorm with strong convection.