| Session Details | |
| Section | AS - Atmospheric Sciences |
| Session Title | Thunder Storm Electricity and Lightning Physics |
| Main Convener | Dr. Chandima Gomes (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Mohd Zainal Abidin Ab Kadir (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia) Prof. Vernon Cooray (Uppsala University, Sweden) |
| Session Description | Lightning, one of the most unpredictable natural disasters, kills more than 25,000 people in the world every year and damage property and electronic worth over several billions of US Dollars. In addition the downtime, due to damaged equipment and lost data, adds several more billion Dollars into the direct loss. Therefore in order to develop methodologies and equipment to safeguard human beings and property against lightning, research has been done for the last century o characteristics of lightning currents and electromagnetic fields generated, inception of lightning at the cloud level and interception with earth bound objects, occurrence distribution, thermal effects and shock waves etc, in various regions with different geography and topography. Electrification of thunderstorms and accompanying lightning activities provide vital information for the forecasting of other extreme events such as flash flood, microbursts, tornadoes etc. Also of interest is the detection of cloud charging and localizing of ground lightning by various techniques such as weather rockets, interferometric methods, TOA methods etc. One of the most significant drawbacks of the lightning science research communities is their practice of “work-in-isolation” which hinders the exchange of information with other relevant disciples. Such cross interaction will greatly enhance the knowledge of the subject and would definitely augment giving solutions to some theoretical and practical riddles remain unsolved for the last few decades. The session is organized with the above focus so that the scientific community on Lightning and thunderstorm electricity research will have and opportunity to interact with other scientists in the spheres of many earth sciences. |