Open AccessThe Relationship of Lightning Radio Pulse Amplitudes and Source Altitudes as Observed by LOFAR
Author(s) -
Machado J. G. O.,
Hare B. M.,
Scholten O.,
Buitink S.,
Corstanje A.,
Falcke H.,
Hörandel J. R.,
Huege T.,
Krampah G. K.,
Mitra P.,
Mulrey K.,
Nelles A.,
Pandya H.,
Rachen J. P.,
Thoudam S.,
Trinh T. N. G.,
ter Veen S.,
Winchen T.
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
earth and space science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 23
ISSN - 2333-5084
DOI - 10.1029/2021ea001958
Subject(s) - lofar , altitude (triangle) , lightning (connector) , amplitude , physics , effects of high altitude on humans , pulse (music) , ionosphere , atmospheric sciences , power law , meteorology , environmental science , astrophysics , radio telescope , geophysics , power (physics) , optics , statistics , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics , detector
When a lightning flash is propagating in the atmosphere it is known that especially the negative leaders emit a large number of very high frequency (VHF) radio pulses. It is thought that this is due to streamer activity at the tip of the growing negative leader. In this work, we have investigated the dependence of the strength of this VHF emission on the altitude of such emission for two lightning flashes as observed by the Low Frequency ARray (LOFAR) radio telescope. We find for these two flashes that the extracted amplitude distributions are consistent with a power‐law, and that the amplitude of the radio emissions decreases very strongly with source altitude, by more than a factor of 2 from 1 km altitude up to 5 km altitude. In addition, we do not find any dependence on the extracted power‐law with altitude, and that the extracted power‐law slope has an average around 3, for both flashes.