2017-11-12, 08:41
MooreGeo,
the maximum distance depends on two factors: the strength of the lightning stroke and the attenuation on the way to your station. I know of research receivers that can detect the strongest strokes world wide. The strongest lightning is positive cloud-ground lightning which can have more than 400 kA of peak current. Those are the strokes that initiate often sprites above the thunderstorm clouds. The attenuation is low over the sea because of the good conductivity of sea water, so if you run a station close to shore in a region with low interference, you can easily detect strokes 10000 km away. This is basically the mode the wwlln network is running which covers the whole world.
the maximum distance depends on two factors: the strength of the lightning stroke and the attenuation on the way to your station. I know of research receivers that can detect the strongest strokes world wide. The strongest lightning is positive cloud-ground lightning which can have more than 400 kA of peak current. Those are the strokes that initiate often sprites above the thunderstorm clouds. The attenuation is low over the sea because of the good conductivity of sea water, so if you run a station close to shore in a region with low interference, you can easily detect strokes 10000 km away. This is basically the mode the wwlln network is running which covers the whole world.
Stations: 1836