Noise Power Radiated by Tropical Thunderstorms

The common types of tropical thunderstorms are described. A synthesis is made of the available information on the subject. Hence, the essential peculiarities and electrical parameters of typical lightning discharges are deduced. These are utilized to explain the radiation that appears as radio noise. An expression is deduced for the average electric field due to a stroke in a flash. This is used to evaluate the power at the source that should correspond to the noise field strength as measured by the noise meter previously described by the author. The noise power is found to vary as the inverse square of the frequency and the expression obtained for the noise power is expected to be valid in the frequency range of 1-20 mc. The theoretical results are compared with values obtained by experiment. There is close agreement between the two.