Ž . Atmospheric Research 56 2001 355–373 www.elsevier.comrlocateratmos Some aspects of the correlation between lightning and rain activities in thunderstorms Serge Soula ) , Serge Chauzy Laboratoire d’Aerologie, UMR 5560 UPSr CNRS OMP, 14 aÕenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France ´ Accepted 21 November 2000 Abstract The lightning activity of convective systems is a sometimes fruitful indicator of their precipitation production. The present study compares rain volume with different types of lightning activity in several convective systems. The study uses data obtained in the Paris area where two lightning detection systems coexist. The Meteorage network provides the location and the polarity ´´ of cloud-to-ground flashes, while the SAFIR system detects the total flash activity: cloud-to-ground, intra-cloud flashes and VHF individual sources within a given time window. The overall spatial correlation between rain and lightning appears to be very consistent for all lightning types. A pixel-to-pixel study shows that positive CG flashes are associated with higher rainwater volume than negative flashes. Introducing a weight coefficient for positive CG flashes considerably improves the correlation between rain amount and lightning production. Taking into account the specific contribution of each type of lightning flash, the amount of rain can be estimated from the total electrical activity of each system. Comparison with the amount derived from radar measure- ment shows reasonable agreement. Finally, the parallel time evolutions of rain and lightning rates display quite similar characteristics. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Lightning; Convective systems; Rainfall 1. Introduction Ž . According to several studies, the simultaneous observations of cloud-to-ground CG Ž flash and rain activities show parallel variations Battan, 1965; Kinzer, 1974; Piepgrass . et al., 1982 . In the studied thunderstorms, an increase in rain generally corresponds with an increase in CG flash rate. The primary observation tools were quite simple when ) Corresponding author. Tel.: q 33-5-61-33-27-67; fax: q 33-5-61-33-27-90. Ž . E-mail address: sous@aero.obs-mip.fr S. Soula . 0169-8095r01r$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Ž . PII: S0169-8095 00 00086-7