Karen Arakelyan, David Pokhsraryan, David Sargsyan,

Alikhanian National Laboratory, Armenia.

Lightning Detection at Aragats Station

Boltek EFM-100

Electric Field Monitor

Electric Field Range: -20 kV/m to +20 kV/mAccuracy: +/- 0.05 kV/m Response Time: 0.1 seconds

Analog Data Output: 1V per kV/m Interface: Fiber optic cable to USB/RS232

Field Mill Block Diagram

Monitoring Software

Log date, time and distance of nearby lightning. Monitor lightning up to 38 km away. Detect the high electric field conditions which precede lightning.

Boltek Storm Tracker Lightning Detection System

Direction-finding antenna provides direction information .

Storm distance is calculated from received signal strength.

Special processing in software reduces the effects of strike-to-strike energy variations providing more accurate distance information.

Lightning Power Spectrum

The bandwidth of the our system is 100-700 kHz

• Timestamp in seconds since midnight

• Timestamp in milliseconds

• Bearing to strike• Distance to strike• Strike type -> CG or IC• Strike polarity -> positive

or negative

Lightning Monotoring System

• Plots the real time data on a map• Allows to replay the previous archived data in accelerated time .

Custom Software

•Extract data from archived file

•Create strike counts time series

•Select a radius of monitoring

•Filter data by type( CG+,IC+,IC-,CG-)

For offline analysis a custom software was developed under LabView.

Event on 23.08.2010

Event on 26.08.2010

Event on 26.08.2010

Event on 23.08.2010

CONCLUSIONS

The lightning detection system and electric field meter facilities are operating at

Aragats mountain and providing additional data to those obtained by particle

detectors for investigation of thunderstorm events.

These data are storing in the central file server and are accessible for monitoring

and processing.