Electric field-changes produced by ground lightning strokes and cloud dart streamer discharges in a tropical area were studied oscillographically with a Wilson sphere used as an aerial. The triggering device of the oscillograph had a response independent of the sign of the input signal. From statistical analysis of 118 whole discharges obtained in the 33 close thunderstorms under observation, it was found that a component stroke to ground on the average destroys an electric moment less than 40 coul km and carries a charge of 2 to 5 coul to earth. From the study of reversal distances for cloud discharges, lower and upper limits for the negatively charged region were found to be about 2 and 8.5 km, and for the positively charged region, about 6 and 11 km, above the ground. The mean moment destroyed by cloud dart streamers was estimated to be about one order smaller than that destroyed by ground strokes.
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C. P. Wang (1963) studied this question.
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