The Electrical Nature of Storms [Hardcover]

Rapid progress during the last twenty years has created a host of new technologies for studying electrical storms, including lightning mapping systems, new radars, satellite sensors, and new ways of measuring electric field and particle charge. This book explains how these advances have revolutionized our understanding. The books provides substantial background material, making it accessible to a broad scientific audience.

Tutorial: Basic Electricity and Magnetism
1. Overview of the Electrical Nature of the Earth's Atmosphere
2. Electrified Nonthunderstorm Clouds
3. Introduction to the Electrical Nature of Thunderstorms
4. Corona and Point Discharge
5. Lightning
6. Instruments
7. Observations of the Electrical Characteristics of Thunderstorms: I. General Characteristics
8. Observations of the Electrical Characteristics of Thunderstorms: II. Severe, Winter, and Tropical Storms and Storm Systems
9. Numerical Models of Thunderstorm Electrification
10. Electrical Effects on Cloud Microphysics
Appendix A. Selected Symbols and Definitions
Appendix B. Physical Constants and Conversion Factors
References
Index

Lightning is among the nation's worst weather hazards, yet even today the processes that electrify clouds are not completely understood. Together, MacGorman and Rust have spent more than 50 years total in research on lightning and storm electricity at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, and they have been teaching a graduate course on these topics at the University of Oklahoma for more than a decade. This book represents their attempt to condense an enormous body of literature on the electrical nature of storms into a single volume textbook, something that has been sorely needed for some time. In many ways, this is the right book, by the right people, at the right place, at the right time. . . . The book is clearly the best compilation of material on storm electricity that exists today. It can be used el“