Severe and extreme weather is a major natural hazard all over the world, oftenresulting in major natural disasters such as hail storms, tornados, wind storms, flash floods,forest fires and lightning damages. While precipitation, wind, hail, tornados, turbulence,etc. can only be observed at close distances, lightning activity in these damaging stormscan be monitored at all spatial scales, from l...

[1] We examined data on 117 return strokes in 31 rocket‐and‐wire‐triggered lightning flashes acquired during experiments conducted from 1999 through 2004 at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing at Camp Blanding, Florida, in order to compare the peak currents of the lightning return strokes with the corresponding charges transferred during various time intervals within 1 m...

Lightning was detected on several planets in the solar system, where it could also produce sprites in the upper layers of these atmospheres. Large sprite discharges at mesospheric altitudes on Earth have been found to be physically similar to streamer discharges in air at sea level density. Based on this understanding, we investigate possible sprite discharges on the Gas Giant planets and on Ve...

The transmission lines are exposed to the atmosphere nature and will be affected by adverse weather such as lightning storm, so that it will affect the reliability of transmission system. This paper studies the fault probability model of transmission line during the lightning storm, and evaluates the short-term reliability of transmission system in the forecasting weather condition. Firstly, bu...

The North American Lightning Detection Network (NALDN) is a commercial lightning detection network composed of the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and the Canadian Lightning Detection Network (CLDN). The NALDN was developed to provide lightning information by accurately detecting and locating most cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning strokes and a small fraction of discharges produce...

Hotspot analysis was implemented to find regions in the province of Alberta (Canada) with high frequency Cloud to Ground (CG) lightning strikes clustered together. Generally, hotspot regions are located in the central, central east, and south central regions of the study region. About 94% of annual lightning occurred during warm months (June to August) and the daily lightning frequency was infl...

Multiple casualty incidents (MCIs) are uncommon in remote wilderness settings. This is a case report of a lightning strike on a Boy Scout troop hiking through Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI), in which the lightning storm hindered rescue efforts. The purpose of this study was to review the response to a lightning-caused MCI in a wilderness setting, address lightning injury as it r...

A self-consistent two-dimensional model is proposed to account for the transient mesospheric nighttime optical emissions associated to possible intracloud (IC) lightning occurring in the Venusian troposphere. The model calculates the mesospheric (between 75 km and 120 km in altitude) quasi-elestrostatic electric field and electron density produced in response to IC lightning activity located be...

Thunderstorms are convective systems characterised by the occurrence of lightning. Lightning and thunderstorm activity has been increasingly studied in recent years in relation to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and various other large-scale modes of atmospheric and oceanic variability. Large-scale modes of variability can sometimes be predictable several months in advance, suggesting p...