Triggered lightning in New Mexico

Abstract

Triggered lightning experiments with rockets pulling a grounded wire were performed at Langmuir Laboratory in 1981. Out of 56 firings, 35 events were triggered among which 29 had a peak current intensity above 2 kA and 27 were hybrid flashes. The highest current peak is 40 kA±10%. The median value of the transported charge is 35 C, including a contribution of 28 C from the continuous component. The largest charge is in a flash carrying a mixture of +235 and −240 C±10%. The median number of pulses is 15 above 2 kA, 10 above 3 kA, and 2 above 10 kA. Comparison with natural lightning reveals a large excess of small current pulses in the triggered case, but there is a great similarity in shape, size, and number between the subsequent strokes of natural flashes and the largest among the pulses in the triggered events.