Thundercloud Electrostatic Field Measurements during the Inflight EXAEDRE Campaign and during Lightning Strike to the Aircraft

The AMPERA (Atmospheric Measurement of Potential and ElectRic field on Aircraft) electric network was integrated the Falcon 20 (F20) SAFIRE (the French facility for airborne research) in framework EXAEDRE (EXploiting new Atmospheric Electricity Data Research Environment) project. From September 2018, an in-flight campaign performed over Corsica (France) to investigate electrical activity thunderstorms. During this campaign, eight scientific flights were done inside or vicinity a thunderstorm. purpose paper is present system atmospheric electrostatic recorded during flights, particularly pass electrified clouds, which aircraft struck by lightning. highest value these around 79 kV·m−1 at 8400 m altitude. A normalization fields computing reduced take into account altitude effect (ratio between air density). Most significant values magnitude retrieved occur 5.5 9.5 km are included 50 100 kV·m−1. measured 194 lightning strike F20. merging results with data from former campaigns suggests that there threshold (depending size) striking aircraft.