Trends toward Improving Passive Radio Engineering Facilities for Thunderstorm Activity Monitoring

Abstract— Options for the development of passive radio engineering facilities for monitoring thunderstorm activity are presented. They allow reducing errors in determining the coordinates of lightning discharges by large-base systems by taking into account the transformation of atmospheric forms during the propagation in the Earth–ionosphere waveguide channel and improving the visual representation of lightning activity data using clustering algorithms for more detailed analysis. The analysis is aimed at improving reliability of determination of a current stage of the thundercloud development, with probabilistic assessment of a degree of its thunderstorm hazard and short-range forecast of subsequent propagation.