A Electrical Field with Multi- Parameters Sounding System for Observations through Thunderstorms

A sounding system with electrical field and precipitation particles in thunderstorm is used for measuring humidity, temperature, the vertical component of electric field (E-field) and particle video. The ground system is used to continuously receive several signals sent by the sounding by tracking the GPS information carried by the sounding. This sounding system operated in a public frequency band of 2.4 GHz and used a fixed channel with the bandwidth of 20MHz to realize the point-to-point full-duplex communication. The ground system was connected to a parabolic directional antenna with high-gain of 27dBi. The real test showed that the maximum communication distance is about 15km which can well guarantee the field observation. The sounding was composed of GPS, temperature and humidity sensors, airborne vertical electric field measurement device, and precipitation particle video device.. GPS signal is very important for locating the balloon position and synchronously tracing sounding by antenna, and the measurement of vertical electric field used the corona probe as the sensor, and the ice phase precipitation particles were captured by a camera with frame rate of 25fl/s. A case of thunderstorm was obtained in the Pingliang of China. The results indicated that the balloon ascend through seven charge areas. A negative one located close to ground and a positive zone was above it in the warm cloud area. Other zones appeared at the area above melting layer and polarity of these was alternative changing. Another case showed the thunderstorm should have four charge regions with the lowest one is negative. However in actual observation, it still exists insufficient in recording the information of ice phase particles.