Atmospheric Muon Measurements Near Tornadic and Non-Tornadic Storms in the US Central Plains

TL;DR

This study explores using atmospheric muon flux measurements to infer the density fields of tornadic storms, offering a potential new method for severe weather analysis beyond traditional in-situ pressure measurements.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of detecting atmospheric density perturbations caused by tornadic storms through muon flux measurements, introducing a novel remote sensing approach.

Findings

Muon flux perturbations correlated with storm intensity.

Smaller detectors can detect large, intense storms.

Directional muon measurements near tornadic features.

Abstract

Tornadoes and other severe weather hazards affect thousands of people every year. Despite this, the details surrounding tornadic processes including formation, decay, and longevity are not well understood, partially due to limitations of available instrumentation. Measurements of atmospheric pressure within tornadic systems currently rely almost entirely on in-situ instrumentation, and no existing techniques can provide two-dimensional spatial information of the atmospheric density field. Atmospheric muons may hold a solution to this problem: muons are attenuated by matter, and tornadic storms are large regions of low atmospheric density, suggesting that tornadic storms induce a directional perturbation on the atmospheric muon flux. Measurements of this perturbation could then be used to infer the density field associated with severe weather. Simulations of these systems indicate that a robust measurement of the atmospheric density field would require a relatively large muon detector, however smaller detectors may be able to detect ambient muon flux perturbations if the storm is large and intense enough. This paper presents results from a pilot field study that measured the atmospheric muon flux near tornadic storms during May 2025, including directional measurements of the muon flux near tornadic mesocyclones and a measurement of the muon flux near the base of a forming tornado.