On the percentage of lightning flashes that begin with initial breakdown pulses

The initial breakdown (IB) stage of lightning flashes typically occurs in the first 20 ms of a flash and includes a series of IB pulses often detected with electric field change sensors. There is disagreement about the percentage of negative cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes that begin with IB pulses. This study includes new data on IB pulses in 198 CG flashes in Austria (latitude ~48˚N), Florida, USA (~29˚N) and South Dakota, USA (~44˚N) with, respectively, 100%, 100%, and 95% of the flashes having IB pulses. The data indicate that the amplitude of the largest IB pulse, range normalized to 100 km, is often weak, < 0.5 V m−1, with the lower latitude having a greater percentage (36%) of these weak maximum IB pulses than the higher latitude (11%). Since sensor noise levels are often larger than this value, detection of smaller amplitude IB pulses may be difficult. A similar result is seen in the amplitude ratio of the largest IB pulse to the first return stroke: at the lower latitude, 50% of flashes had a ratio < 0.1 versus 8% of flashes at the higher latitude. However, comparisons of the amplitude ratios from Austria (~48˚) and South Dakota (~44˚) do not support a simple latitude dependence. The data also show that 5–10% of IB pulses occur more than 100 ms before the first return stroke. These findings may explain why some previous studies found percentages <100%. Overall, the results indicate that all negative CG flashes probably begin with IB pulses.

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