Observation and Analysis Results of an Electrical Field Sounding System

A balloon-borne sounding system was designed to measure the vertical electric field, humidity, temperature and precipitation particle (size and type of ice phase) within thunderstorm. Based on the principle of GPS tracking, a ground-based automatic tracking and transceiver system (hereinafter referred to as the ground system) was designed to receive all signals transmitted from the sounding continuously. Some results obtained by this system had been introduced in this paper. A result of a sounding measurement in Aug.22 2016 in the inland plateau of China shows that total four charge regions were found in the mature stage of a thunderstorm and charge polarity was alternate in a vertical direction with a negative charge region at the lowest in the warm cloud region. Another result of a sounding measurement in Aug.26 2018, obtained above the tropical island of China, shows that at the dissipation stage of the thunderstorm, there is a positive polar charge zone in the warm cloud, while there is a strong negative charge zone near
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level and a positive charge zone above. This system could adapt to different environments and obtain valid data of electric field (E). However, in actual observation, there was still some shortness in obtaining the information of ice phase particles image.