Propagation effect of the lightning vertical electric field along the actual ground surface and the revision of errors on ToA-based lightning location systems

A satellite remote imaging data is used to describe the actual ground surface around east of Shandong, based on Barrick’s formulations and Wait’s formulations, and considering the time errors due to elongation of the propagation path caused by mountains, this paper comprehensively analyzes the lightning vertical electric field over the actual ground surface. Furthermore, its effects on time-of-arrival (ToA)-based lighting location systems (LLS) are discussed in details and results show that wave-shape and time-delay of the electromagnetic fields can be significantly affected when they propagate over actual ground surface. The time-delay of the field waveform becomes longer with the increasing roughness, but subtle effect on field peak. After analyzing the actual ground surface around district of Qingdao, this paper reveals the relation between azimuth, observation distance and time-delay. The location error caused by actual ground surface is about several kilometers around the district of Qingdao, and the revised stroke points which are evaluated by the improved actual ground surface propagation model are closer to the actual lightning strike points.