A comparative study of the electrical characteristics of positive and negative narrow bipolar events

Narrow bipolar events(NBEs)are intriguing intra-cloud discharge that have attracted enormous interest in the lightning community.They come with two polarities that dominate at different altitudes in thunderclouds.The sources of negative NBEs are usually located near the top of thunderclouds;those of positive NBEs are at the middle levels.NBEs may occur at the onset of lightning.The electrical properties of NBEs remain poorly understood.We present here the first comparative study of the electrical characteristics of negative and positive NBEs.To derive electrical parameters from the fast electric field change waveforms of 1673 positive NBEs and 364 negative NBEs recorded by the Jianghuai Area Sferic Array(JASA)in China,we use an improved method based on the transmission line model.This approach concludes that negative NBEs occurring at high altitudes tend to produce a narrower current pulse and take a shorter time to traverse the channel than their positive counterparts.Moreover,compared to positive NBEs,a larger portion of negative NBEs are associated with slightly greater peak current moments but smaller overall charge moments.The differences reported herein between electrical properties of negative and positive NBEs suggest that charge distribution in NBE-producing thunderstorms tends to vary systematically with altitude.

Observations of narrow bipolar events during two thunderstorms in Northeast China

Here we report characteristics of more than 100 cases of Narrow Bipolar Events(NBEs)occurred during two thunderstorms on the basis of our analysis of the dataset collected by a GPS based three-station time of arrival(TOA)lightning location system deployed in Northeast China during the summer of 2010.All of the NBEs were of positive polarity and the amplitude of VLF/LF initial pulse of NBE was comparable to that of return strokes.The waveform characteristics of 166 NBEs that occurred within 150 km were consistent with the results of other reports.The average value of initial peak width of the bipolar pulse is 7.8±1.5 μs,full width at half maximum is 4.6±1.0 μs,and the ratio of initial peak amplitude to overshoot peak is 2.1±0.6.The inferred source height of NBEs occurred in two thunderstorms averaged 9.6 and 7.4 km above mean sea level,whereas the corresponding virtual ionosphere heights at two different times were 89 and 78 km,respectively.In NBEproducing thunderstorms,NBEs tended to burst during the active stage of normal lightning;nevertheless,no determinate quantitative relations could be established between them.In Storm 0711,NBEs were inclined to cluster at the proximity of particular convective cores with high radar reflectivity,and NBEs tended to move consistently at the front area of those NBE-producing convective cores during the evolution of thunderstorm.