Abstract
Brief bursts of high frequency (HF) and very high frequency (VHF) radio
emissions unaccompanied by strong low frequency radiation have been
observed during initiation and propagation of lightning or thunderstorm
electrical breakdown without leading to fully-fledged lightning. This
paper investigates a physical mechanism to generate such radio bursts by
electrical discharge activity inside a thundercloud. When a discharge
consists of many high frequency emission sources, such as streamers,
that generate currents in random directions, its radiation spectrum
peaks in the HF and VHF bands, and the spectral magnitudes in low
frequencies are much smaller or even negligible. Combined with recent
observational findings, the present study suggests that lightning
initiation may begin with a short burst of many randomly occurring
small-scale discharges in a localized thundercloud region.