The effects of air pressure and water vapour content on the propagation of positive corona streamers, and their implications to lightning initiation
✍ Scribed by R. F. Griffiths; C. T. Phelps
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1976
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 574 KB
- Volume
- 102
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0035-9009
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
As a first step in the construction and testing of a theoretical model of lightning initiation, measurements have been made of the ambient electric field __E__o required to support the long‐range propagation of corona streamers as a function of dry air pressure pα and the partial pressure of water vapour pw. The experiments reveal that __E__o falls more rapidly with pα than would be expected on the assumption that __E__ä/pα = const., which has been used in previous discussions of the problem of lightning initiation. __E__o was found to increase linearly with pw. It appears that Eo is considerably less than the field required to initiate corona from any type of hydrometeor excepting colliding drop pairs. Arguments based on these results are presented to show that the high fields in thunderclouds are probably restricted to regions that are small in extent compared with the dimensions of the thundercloud.