The data is being collected from four lightning mapping array stations along a roughly 60 mile stretch on the east side of Cook Inlet, across from the volcano, which lies about 110 miles southwest of Anchorage in the Kenai Peninsula Borough.

Lightning is seen over Mount Redoubt during a March 28 eruption. Researchers from New Mexico Tech, working with the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Volcano Observatory, are studying data from Redoubt's lightning storms in an effort to issue better severe weather warnings. Photo/Bretwood Higman/Courtesy of the Alaska Volcano Observatory

Lightning mapping arrays, now set up in several areas of the country for research studies, are becoming increasingly used by meteorologists to help issue weather warnings.

This project is a joint effort of New Mexico Tech, a state engineering university in Socorro, N.M., the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which is a joint program of the Geophysical Institute and the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

The project is funded largely through the National Science Foundation, which gave New Mexico Tech a three-year grant in 2007 to study volcanic lightning, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Volcano Observatory as collaborators.

When Mount Redoubt started rumbling in January, a team of New Mexico Tech researchers traveled to the area to deploy four lightning mapping array stations, portable sensors designed and built at tech.

When the volcano began erupting overnight on March 22 and March 23, the stations started returning clear and dramatic information about the electricity created within volcanic plumes and the resulting lightning.

Each station weighs about 40 pounds and has its electronics contained in a modified picnic cooler. The sensing stations can store up to three months of radio wave information and are capable of running unattended.

"With Redoubt, we have data for all the eruptions and will be well posed to examine trends as a function of time," said Steve McNutt, coordinating scientist for the GGI/AVO. "We are accumulating a fantastic data set of the eruptions."

AVO is also gathering data from 11 local seismic stations, two infrasound arrays and two radar stations. Webcam, remote sensing, gas flights, direct observations and sampling are providing more data.

McNutt said the information is then downloaded from the Internet by researchers, from the sites at Clam Gulch, Ninilchik, Kenai and Nikiski. The data tells researchers the exact time lightning occurred in the volcanic plumes, and about the electrical qualities of the plume. Lightning measurements tell researchers how big the eruption is.

"If we had the time and money, it would have been good to put a couple (of lightning mapping array stations) closer to the volcano," he said.

Each of the sensors cost about $10,000, not counting the cost of shipping, and staff time for travel and setting them up, he said.

The NSF grant also funds several months of the researchers' time.

Magaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska

journal.com.