ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the technology in measuring lightning from the ground and from space. Methods of detecting lightning from space are concentrating on optical techniques. The chapter summarizes the best results for global lightning measurements, based on both ground and satellite observations. It reviews a few fundamentals of the lightning flash. Discharges exclusively in the cloud are intracloud flashes, those leaving the cloud and contacting the ground are called cloud-to-ground flashes, and those ending in the air surrounding the cloud are termed air discharges. Using appropriate electronics, instrumentation has been developed to pass only the waveform characteristic of return strokes and to reject waveforms characteristic of cloud discharges. When more than three sensors detect a stroke, the method of circular intersections can produce an optimized solution by employing an iterative algorithm similar to the ones used in magnetic direction finding.
