Estimation of Thundercloud Direction by Horizontal Electric Field Meters

Abstract

The horizontal electric field (E_r) contains useful information for estimating position of thundercloud. Unfortunately, it is difficult to detect horizontal electric field (E_r) due to electric field component on the earth surface is almost a vertical component.
We propose a new idea for horizontal electric field (E_r) detection. We developed two types of horizontal electric field meter (HEFM), i. e., a fixed electrode-type and a rotating electrode-type, and evaluated their performance experimentally and found that they have sufficient sensitivity to E_r to estimate the direction of thundercloud. In this paper, we present the result of performance evaluation and also present an electric field data measured by HEFMs as examples.