Radiation from lightning return strokes over a finitely conducting Earth

Vine, David M. Le; Gesell, Leslie H.; Kao, M.

doi:10.1029/jd091id11p11897

Cited by 26 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Both of these sets of calibrations were within 100 ns of the values we found above. This agreement is reasonable since both of these additional procedures involve sources that are close to ground and hence the calibrations are compromised by the effects of a finitely conducting ground [Le Vine et al, 1986]. Note that all of these calibration methods use only dE/dt signals that have been sensed and recorded in exactly the same manner as the lightning signals that we analyze.…”

Section: Retrieval Of Systemmentioning

confidence: 55%

System for locating the sources of wideband dE/dt from lightning

Thomson¹,

Medelius²,

Davis³

1994

J. Geophys. Res.

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A system has been developed to measure wideband electric field derivatives (dE/dt) at five ground stations in a 15 km × 15 km network at Kennedy Space Center. Individual station responses are normalized using digital filters. Pulse‐timing resolution is improved to much less than the 50‐ns sample interval by interpolation using packing in the frequency domain. A time tag for each pulse is defined as the mean of the times of the rising‐edge half peak, peak, and falling‐edge half peak. The standard deviation in these times defines the timing error and is shown to be a function of noise and bandwidth rather than digitization rate. Each of the four unknowns for a pulse source location (x,y,z) and time of occurrence (t) is found from the five time‐tag measurements using different weightings for all five combinations of the four‐station hyperbolic equations. Weighting factors and errors in x,y,z and t are estimated using error propagation techniques.

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Section: Retrieval Of Systemmentioning

confidence: 55%

System for locating the sources of wideband dE/dt from lightning

Thomson¹,

Medelius²,

Davis³

1994

J. Geophys. Res.

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“…We have been unable to find in the literature either HF spectra of the noise immediately following the radiation field peaks of return strokes, or absolutely calibrated time series of HF amplitude (from tuned receivers) with suitable time resolution, to compare with Figure A1. Using uncalibrated receivers, Takagi [1969] and Le Vine and Krider [1977] showed that the noise at several HF and VHF frequencies tends to be loud during tens to hundreds of microseconds after first strokes but quiet in similar intervals after subsequent strokes, in qualitative agreement with our findings (although these authors found a gap of a few tens of microseconds between the initial peak of the first-stroke field change and the onset of radiation, presumably due to attenuation from overland propagation [Cooray, 1986;Le Vine et al, 1986]).…”

Section: Appendix A: Spectral Analysismentioning

confidence: 85%

Lightning‐channel morphology revealed by return‐stroke radiation field waveforms

Willett¹,

Vine²,

Idone³

1995

J. Geophys. Res.

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Simultaneous video and wideband electric field recordings of 32 cloud‐to‐ground lightning flashes in Florida were analyzed to show that the formation of new channels to ground can be detected by examination of the return‐stroke radiation fields alone. The return‐stroke E and dE/dt waveforms were subjectively classified according to their fine structure. Then the video images were examined field by field to identify each waveform with a visible channel to ground. Fifty‐five correlated waveforms and channel images were obtained. Of these, all 34 first‐stroke waveforms (multiple jagged E peaks, noisy dE/dt), 8 of which were not radiated by the chronologically first stroke in the flash, came from new channels to ground (not previously seen on video). All 18 subsequent‐stroke waveforms (smoothly rounded E and quiet dE/dt after the initial peak) were radiated by old channels (illuminated by a previous stroke). Two double‐ground waveforms (two distinct first‐return‐stroke pulses separated by tens of microseconds or less) coincided with video fields showing two new channels. One “anomalous‐stroke” waveform (beginning like a first stroke and ending like a subsequent) was produced by a new channel segment to ground branching off an old channel. This waveform classification depends on the presence or absence of high‐frequency fine structure. Fourier analysis shows that first‐stroke waveforms contain about 18 dB more spectral power in the frequency interval from 500 kHz to at least 7 MHz than subsequent‐stroke waveforms for at least 13 μs after the main peak.

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“…This is higher than the results of Cooray [] who reported that the RS peaks can be attenuated by 25% when propagating 200 km above the ground with a low conductivity of 0.002 S/m (~1.25 dB/100 km). A possible reason could be that high‐frequency parts of the radiated signal can be attenuated faster [ Chapman and Macario , ; Chapman et al ., ; Le Vine et al ., ; Cooray , ; Cooray et al ., ]. However, we found that the attenuation remained roughly the same when we applied the digital low‐pass filtering with cutoff frequencies of 35 kHz or 350 kHz on electric field waveforms.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Subionospheric propagation and peak currents of preliminary breakdown pulses before negative cloud‐to‐ground lightning discharges

Kolmašová

Santolı́k

Farges

et al. 2016

Geophysical Research Letters

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We analyze broadband electromagnetic measurements of pulse sequences occurring prior to first return strokes of negative cloud‐to‐ground lightning flashes. Signals generated by lightning discharges were recorded close to the thunderstorm by a magnetic field receiver and traveled up to 600 km to three distant electric field receivers. We found that amplitudes of observed preliminary breakdown pulses, as well as amplitudes of the corresponding return strokes, are attenuated approximately by 2 dB/100 km when propagating in the Earth‐ionosphere waveguide over mountainous terrain. Propagation simulations show that there is a significant contribution of the sky wave signals in the waveforms observed beyond 500 km from their source. The estimated peak currents of the largest preliminary breakdown pulses reach over 60 kA. Such current pulses propagating through in‐cloud lightning leader channels in a strong electric field may be able to initiate terrestrial gamma ray flashes.

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Radiation from lightning return strokes over a finitely conducting Earth

Cited by 26 publications

References 35 publications

System for locating the sources of wideband dE/dt from lightning

System for locating the sources of wideband dE/dt from lightning

Lightning‐channel morphology revealed by return‐stroke radiation field waveforms

Subionospheric propagation and peak currents of preliminary breakdown pulses before negative cloud‐to‐ground lightning discharges

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