Evaluation of WRF-ELEC model to forecast lightning over the North Eastern region of India

In the past few years during the pre-monsoon season, the Weather Research Forecast model coupled with Electricity (WRF-ELEC) has been used to forecast lightning activities over the North Eastern region of India. The model underestimated the events without lightning data assimilation and forecasted only a few cases. Instead, the model capability was significantly improved by assimilating lightning data. It can predict above 91% with a 0.78 success ratio in the lead-time of one hour. The validations have been done for 67 thunderstorm days with 870 cases. We noticed the model capable of forecasting up to 3–4 h with acceptable accuracy, which worsens after increasing the lead-time further. In addition, we found the WRF-ELEC biased to the places of lightning location once severe lightning activities over specific areas. That means the thunderstorm gets steady from the model though moving forward in reality. This study focused on assessing the capability of WRF-ELEC and found that it can forecast specified locations with actionable lead-time. The overall goal of this work is to show the present capability and limitations of using the WRF-ELEC model that may help to effectively operational lightning and rainfall warning.