A new technique to determine the lightning charge location from the electric field vector measurements

Abstract

A new technique to find out the magnitude and location of the net charge center and the charge destroyed in a lightning flash in a thundercloud has been proposed. The technique is based on the measurements of the electric field vector on the ground surface during a lightning flash. The technique has the advantage of field measurements being made at only one station if simultaneous measurements for the distance of lightning are made with time-to-thunder technique. From our measurements made with a spherical field meter with Maxwell's current density, typical cases of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground discharges are analyzed. The values of above parameters calculated from this technique are within the normal range of these variables in thunderclouds inferred from other techniques. However, the charge values show significant change when the electric field vector instead of only the vertical electric field measured by conventional field mill is used for the calculations.