The Lightning Phenomenon 

Title: Webinar on ‘The Lightning Phenomenon’
Speaker: Prof. Marcos Rubinstein from University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western, Switzerland
Abstract: Lightning is one of the primary causes of damage and malfunction of telecommunication and power networks and one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths and injuries. Lightning is composed of numerous physical processes, of which only a few are visible to the naked eye.
This overview presents and discusses various aspects of the lightning phenomenon, including its main processes and the technologies that have been developed to assess the parameters that are important for engineering and scientific applications, such as the currents of the lightning channel and the electromagnetic fields from the flash. The measurement of these parameters is intrinsically difficult due to the randomness of the phenomenon and to the harsh electromagnetic environment created by the lightning itself.
Besides the measurement of the lightning parameters, lightning warning and insurance applications require the detection and location of the lightning strike point (in real-time in the case of warning systems). The main classical and emerging lightning detection and location techniques, including those used in currently available commercial lightning location systems will be described in the lecture. The newly proposed Electromagnetic Time Reversal technique, which has the potential to revolutionize lightning location will also be presented.