Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38

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Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jastp

Characteristics of negative lightning leaders to ground observed by

TVLS
Shi Qiu a,n,1, Zhidong Jiang a,1, Lihua Shi a,1, Zhencong Niu b,1, Peng Zhang c,1
a
National Key Laboratory on Electromagnetic Environmental Effects and Electro-Optical Engineering, PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing,
China
b
Army Aviation Institute, Beijing, China
c
PLA University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Thunder and VHF lightning Locating System (termed TVLS) is established and utilized to observe
Received 28 February 2015 leader behaviors of negative cloud to ground (CG) flashes. This system takes advantages of VHF broad-
Received in revised form band interferometer and thunder imaging technique, which could provide the temporal and quasi-3D
27 May 2015
spatial evolution of lightning discharges. In conjunction with synchronized electric field changes (E-
Accepted 9 July 2015
Available online 14 July 2015
changes) and electric field derivatives (dE/dt) records, 10 leaders from two CG flashes are presented and
analyzed. Based on the characteristic evolution of leader velocities, E-changes, dE/dt waveforms and VHF
Keywords: intervals, three stepped leaders, five dart leaders and two dart-stepped leaders are identified. The
Lightning leader stepped leaders behave impulsive while approaching ground, with average speed (1.3∼3.9)
105 m/s. All
Dart-stepped
normal dart leaders presented here exhibit irregular (or termed “chaotic”) fluctuations in E-change and
Chaotic
dE/dt waveforms, with the similar speeds ((1.0∼2.9)
107 m/s) and durations ((300∼700) μs) of the
TVLS
“chaotic” leaders observed by other investigators. The irregular fluctuations would be weak if the
channels keep conductive until the leader enters the less conductive branches, coinciding with VHF
radiations in time sequence. The dart-stepped leader could be divided into the dart stage and the stepped
stage by a transition region, which usually lies around the branch junctions of previous active channel.
The dart stage resembles the normal dart leader, and the stepped stage usually associates with regular
pulse trains in E-change and dE/dt waveforms.
& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction from the highly time-resolved imaging techniques, lightning lea-

Understanding lightning leader processes is a key for lightning
protection, and provides an effective way to reveal physical me-
chanism of lightning discharges. Based on the electric field change
(E-change) characteristics, the common negative lightning leaders
are usually divided into three types: stepped leader, dart leader
and dart-stepped leader (Krider et al., 1977). Stepped leader occurs
preceding the first return stroke, while dart leaders usually follow
the previous established lightning channels (Rakov and Uman,
2003). If the dart leader enters a channel less conductive, it may
evolve to dart-stepped leader (Uman, 2001).
Lightning leaders to ground have been investigated by number
of researchers in the past decades. Especially recently, benefited
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zeustone@yeah.net (S. Qiu), jzd19851102@163.com (Z. Jiang),
shilih@tom.com (L. Shi), gamit@163.comt (Z. Niu), radarpeng@126.com (P. Zhang).
1
National Key Laboratory on Electromagnetic Environmental Effects and
Electro-Optical Engineering, PLA University of Science and Technology, No. 1 Hai-
FuXiang street, Nanjing 210007, China.
ders have become a renewed interest. Fine structures in evolution
characteristic and formation mechanism of lightning leaders have
been gradually revealed (Biagi et al., 2014, 2010; Edens et al., 2014;
Gamerota et al., 2014; Hill et al., 2012; Jiang, et al., 2014; Stol-
zenburg et al., 2014) and some new leader types are also identified
(Campos et al., 2014; Stolzenburg et al., 2013). However, there are
still some unresolved questions in leader propagations, such as:
what happens in “chaotic” dart leader? How does a leader evolve
to a dart-stepped leader or stepped leader? And what is the re-
lation among E-change, EM radiations and developing behavior in
different leader processes?
VHF mapping technique provides another valuable tool to
study leader breakdown processes. Moreover, VHF receivers could
retrieve the sources obscured by clouds, which may not be “seen”
by video observations. In this work, the comprehensive Thunder
and VHF lightning Locating System (termed “TVLS”) synchronized
with E-change and electric field derivatives (dE/dt) was utilized to
study the different behaviors of negative lightning leaders to
ground, and the finding on the physics of dart leader propagation
was also discussed.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2015.07.008
1364-6826/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
32 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38

2. Experiment setup and methodology
The proposed observation system TVLS takes advantage of
thunder imaging and VHF broadband interferometer to retrieve
the evolution of the radiation sources with quasi three dimen-
sional (3D) locations. Moreover, the synchronized E-changes and
dE/dt signals are recorded to analyze leader propagations in a
more comprehensive view.
2.1. Instrumentation
The configuration of TVLS antenna is illustrated in Fig. 1. A
perfectly matched VHF and acoustic receiver array consists of
three horizontally separated units. The three units aligned at three
apexes of a square with the baseline's length of 12.5 m. Each unit is
composed of a VHF broadband antenna and a high-gain capacitor
microphone. Broadband VHF radiations (30–300 MHz) are band-
stop (88–108 MHz) filtered and then digitized at a rate of 1GS/s
with 8 bit resolution by a digital storage oscilloscope (DSO). The
whole memory of DSO is divided into numbers of segments, with
each segment recording several microseconds, and each segment
is triggered independently when the VHF radiation exceeds the
defined threshold. The dead time between segments is less than
1 μs. Three microphones are connected to a PCI data acquisition
card, with sampling rate at 100 kS/s and duration of 30 s. In ad-
dition, a PCI data acquisition card operates with sampling rate at
10 MS/s is synchronized to record E-changes (with decay time
constant of 1 ms) and dE/dt radiations. Data acquisition of the
system is triggered by VHF signals, and the whole TVLS system is
automatically controlled by the PC-based program to ensure all
records are synchronized in time.
2.2. Quasi-3D localization
In order to retrieve the three dimensional (3D) development of
leader processes, a joint localization methodology which combines
broadband interferometry and thunder imaging techniques is in-
troduced (Qiu et al., 2012). The outline of the localization proce-
dure could be generalized as the following three steps:
(1) The azimuth and elevation of VHF and thunder sources
could be resolved by broadband interferometry (Qiu et al., 2009)
and acoustic ray tracing (Few, 1970) techniques respectively;
(2) Thunder sources have additional range information by
measuring the differential time of arrival (DTOA) between thunder
and lightning electromagnetic pulse (LEMP);
(3) Thunder sources have a matched azimuth and elevation
with VHF sources could provide a quasi-3D VHF imaging.
Considering that the same geometry configuration is used in
both the VHF and acoustic array, localization discrepancy arisen
from array installation would be minimized. In order to further
evaluate the location uncertainty of TVLS, a rough estimation
method is proposed here.
The 3D location uncertainty (Up) for position P consists of two
components: radial uncertainty (Urad) and tangential uncertainty
(Utan). Radial uncertainty can be attributed to acoustic velocity
changes and the DTOA uncertainty (δt) between thunder signals
and LEMP. Usually, err caused by acoustic velocity changes could
be neglected compared to the DTOA uncertainty, and the later
arises from the time-window duration for retrieving a thunder
source. In the present work, the 100 ms time-window is adopted,
which means that the DTOA uncertainty for each source is 50 ms.
Tangential uncertainty is in proportion to the angle uncertainty
(δθ). For the presented 10 leaders, angle differences from thunder
sources to the closest VHF sources are less than 2°, so it is rea-
sonable to infer that the angle uncertainty (δθ) is less than 1°. In
summary, 3D location uncertainty (Up) of the system could be
derived by Eq. (1), where v represents acoustic velocity and r re-
presents the radial distance from observation site to the source.
2 2
Up = Urad + Utan = (v⋅δt )2 + (r⋅δ θ )2 (1)
2.3. 3D velocity estimation for leaders
Since quasi-3D locations of leaders were available, the velocity
variations during their development could be derived by the fol-
lowing steps:
(1) Dividing the channel into (N  1) piecewise linear segments
by N sources which located at Pi, i¼ 1, 2, … , N  1;
(2) Calculating the length of each segment (li) between two
adjacent points Pi and Pi þ 1;
(3) Obtaining the time duration (Δti) when the leader passes
through each segment by VHF results, and thereafter, the leader
velocity during each segment could be derived by Eq. (2), and the
mean velocity over (N  1) segments could also be deduced by
Eq. (3).
li Pi + 1 − Pi
vi = = , i = 1⋯ N − 1
Δti Δti (2)
N−1 N−1
∑i = 1 li ∑i = 1 Pi + 1 − Pi
v¯ = N−1
= N−1
∑i = 1 Δti ∑i = 1 Δti (3)
The velocity uncertainty corresponding to Eqs. (2) and (3) are
given by Eqs. (4) and (5), respectively. Note that the uncertainty of
Δti is too small to be neglected compared with the length un-
certainty (Uli).

Uli UP2i + 1 + UP2i

Uv i = = , i = 1⋯ N − 1
Δti Δti (4)

N−1
∑i = 1 Ul2i
Uv¯ = N−1
∑i = 1 Δti (5)
r
5m2.

3. Observations
d=1

2
El

In the summer of 2011, a comprehensive lightning observation

was conducted using the TVLS in Nanjing, China. 10 Leaders from
1 Az
d=12.5m two negative natural cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes are analyzed in
this work. Since TVLS system could provide quasi-3D development
Fig. 1. Layout of the VHF and acoustic array in TVLS. of leaders as well as strictly synchronized E-changes and dE/dt
 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38 33

3.1. L1  L3 in CG075744

The E-changes and TVLS location results of CG075744 are

L3 shown in Fig. 2. This flash originated overhead the observational
L1 L2
site and consisted of three leader-return stroke sequences. Since it
E

was a very close flash, E-changes for most leaders were saturated.
The initial leader L1 started with widespread branches over-
head and then progressed northwest into three major branches
90 211.94
4.66 3.60 2.95 below 420 m in height. About 11 ms after its initiation, L1 con-
80 tacted ground 657 m northwest of the observational site. The
5.82 2.60
177.92 average speed of L1 is 3.4
105 m/s, indicative of a typical stepped
70 1.90
1.74
leader.
3.03 1.56
60 1.41 176.32 About 54 ms after the first return stroke, the second leader L2
initiated from one of undeveloped L1 branches and then estab-
50
0.86
173.46 lished new branches. L2 developed with average speed
40 2.5
105 m/s and generated a new ground termination 872 m
0.42

30 110.36
southeast of the site, which proved to be a stepped leader too.
0.42
0.24 L1 L2, L3 The last leader L3 followed the main channel of L2 all the way
20 to ground without branches. The duration of L3 was only 0.7 ms,
0.12 107.38
10
0.12 and the velocity decreased from initial 1.4
107 m/s to
2.9
106 m/s during its finial 120 m.
0 95.13
-50 0 50 100 150 Table 1 lists the velocity variations for L1∼L3, along with in-
terstroke intervals and identified leader types. The velocity of L1
Fig. 2. Overview of CG 075744 (a) Overall E-field changes (L1–L3 denote leaders and L2 tended to increase in general while approaching ground. It
and the vertical short lines below the waveform mark the occurrence time of each was noteworthy that after L3 passing the branch junctions around
VHF segment); (b) TVLS location of the flash in azimuth-elevation format, with 0° point 4 (1.41 km in height), the velocity dropped dramatically from
azimuth denoting the north direction and increasing clockwise (evolution of VHF
sources are plotted by color dots; thunder sources are denoted with black circles, 107 m/s to 106 m/s in magnitude. The corresponding VHF trigger-
with the number indicating source height in km). (For interpretation of the refer- ing intervals for L1∼L3 are plotted in Fig. 3. The trigger interval is
ences to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this the time interval between two adjacent VHF segments, which
article.)
indicates the density and activity of VHF radiation. For L1 and L2,
VHF radiations got more intensive as leader approaching ground,
records, the evolution characteristics of leaders could be in-
while for L3, VHF intervals changed from several microseconds to
vestigated in detail. Note that the time tick “0” in each following
several tens of microseconds after passing the transition point 4.
record denotes the triggering point of the system, and the E-
All these observations suggested that L3 is a dart-stepped leader,
change is positive if negative charge is removed overhead.
and the transition from the dart stage to the stepped stage was
obviously separated by the transition region around point 4.

Table 1
Velocity variations of L1  L3, along with uncertainty of each value

Dividing point 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean Interstroke interval (ms) Leader types

H(km) 2.60 7 0.05 1.89 7 0.04

1.56 7 0.04
0.86 7 0.03
1.41 70.03 0.42 70.03
Segment
0.127 0.02 length 0.737 0.06
(km)
0.2470.05
0.34 70.05 0.65 70.04
0.317 0.03
0.43 70.04

vL1* (m/μs) – 0.34 7 0.02 Stepped

– – – – –
vL2(m/μs) 0.187 0.01 0.22 7 0.03
0.30 70.06
0.277 0.03
0.26 70.02 0.39 70.04
68 Stepped vL3(m/μs)
0.25 70.01 13.71 71.13
10.9 72.27
11.21 71.65 5.88 70.36
2.87 7 0.28 33
3.38 70.31 8.377 0.35
Dart-stepped

n
Leader L1 propagates along the path different from L2 and L3, so only the mean velocity is given.
34 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38

80
Interval / s

60
L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10
40

E
20

105 106 107 108 109 110 111

t /ms 80 1081.65
z:5.2
z:4.6
40 70 4
3 665.83

30
Interval / s

60

599.16
20 50
z:2.7

10 40 z:1.9 598.63

173 174 175 176 177 178 179

4
30
t /ms z:1.3 549.56

20
8
60
Transition region z:0.5 547.65
50 10
Interval / s

(~1.4km) 0
40
0 483.25
30 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190

20

10 Fig. 4. Overview of CG 140349, as in Fig. 2 (a) Overall E-field changes; (b) TVLS
location of the flash. B1∼B3 are three main branches.
211.4 211.5 211.6 211.7 211.8 211.9
t /ms

Fig. 3. VHF segments intervals of leader L1∼L3.
3.2. L4 L10 in CG140349
An overview of the second flash CG140349 is shown in Fig. 4.
This flash consisted of seven leaders L4∼L10, and all these leaders
attached ground with the same termination at 2.56 km southwest
the site. Velocity variations for L4∼L10 could also be obtained by
TVLS and are listed in Table 2. The typical dE/dt signatures and
VHF intervals are illustrated in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, respectively.
The initial leader L4 developed to ground with increasing
speeds from 1.3
105 m/s to 3.6
105 m/s, with three major
branches B1∼B3 labeled in Fig. 4(b). Branch B1 finally contacted
ground and established the main channel for the following lea-
ders. The E-change and dE/dt waveforms of L4 were much im-
pulsive, as shown in Fig. 5(a), indicative of a stepped leader.
Dart-stepped leader L5 initiated at (4∼5) km in height and then
advanced with velocity 1.1
107 m/s along the main channel. VHF
evolution, E-changes and dE/dt waveforms for L5 are presented in
Fig. 7. After L5 arriving at the region of branching point at about
2.5 km in height, it began to branch into B1∼B3 along the previous
leader path, and the velocity decreased to (2.4∼6.8)
106 m/s. The
corresponding VHF intervals plotted in Fig. 6(b) also exhibited a
transition similar to L3 in Fig. 3(c). An interesting phenomenon
was that regular dE/dt pulse trains also appeared after L5 passing
the transition region, as shown in Fig. 5(b), which indicated L5
evolved from the dart stage into the stepped stage.
The subsequent leader L6∼L10 were all dart leaders which
followed along the main channel B1 all the way to ground without
branches. The developing velocities were 107 m/s in magnitude,
and the dE/dt signatures exhibited much “chaotic” appearances, as
shown in the expanded view Fig. 5(c).
L6 and L7 are selected here to illustrate the characteristics of
these dart leaders, as shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, respectively.
The E-changes in Fig. 8(c) started to decrease at about
665.51 ms. In the meantime, continuous VHF records were trig-
gered, and the dE/dt radiations in Fig. 8(b) became noisy. Located
VHF sources showed the L6 went down along the previous chan-
nel all the way to ground during its lifetime 0.5 ms. DE/dt radia-
tions were growing higher as L6 approaching ground, and showed
“chaotic” appearances in the expanded view in Fig. 5(c).
L7 initiated with the E-changes decreasing from 730.25 ms in
Fig. 9(c). Thereafter, there were only four VHF segments triggered
in the past 0.6 ms, which scattered in the previous channel above
3 km in height. An examination for the dE/dt records in this period
suggested that there were “chaotic” dE/dt radiations above the
noise level, but they were too weak to be recognized in the overall
waveforms. At 730.86 ms, VHF radiations became intensive, and
the corresponding “chaotic” dE/dt signals gradually went stronger.
The located VHF sources after 730.86 ms lay in the lower portion
of B1 channel below 1.3 km, and developed with average velocity
1.3
107 m/s. L7 was a typical dart leader, and the fact that few
VHF triggered in the beginning 0.6 ms suggested the upper
channel still conductive at that moment.
4. Summary and discussions
4.1. Summary
TVLS provide an effective way to study leader behaviors. In this
work, 10 leaders in two flashes are analyzed. According to their
velocity, VHF, dE/dt and E-change characteristics, these leaders are
classified to three types: stepped leaders, dart leaders and dart-
stepped leaders. The dart stage resembles normal dart leaders, and
the stepped stage usually associates with regular pulse trains in
E-change and dE/dt waveforms. The transition region between the
two stages usually lies around the branch junctions of previous
 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38 35

Table 2
Velocity variations of L4  L10, along with uncertainty of each value.

Dividing Point 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean Interstroke interval (ms) Leader types

H(km) 2.667 0.06 2.497 0.06

2.25 70.06
1.39 7 0.05
1.917 0.06 0.55 70.05
Segment length(km)
0 0.26 70.09
0.38 7 0.09
0.26 70.09 0.54 70.08
0.55 7 0.05
0.84 70.08

vL4(m/μs) 0.137 0.03 0.167 0.04

0.20 70.03
0.36 7 0.03
0.34 70.03 0.26 70.02
Stepped
vL5(m/μs) 10.727 2.62 2.417 0.57
4.30 70.64
4.707 0.43 49
6.82 70.65 4.677 0.29
Dart-stepped
vL6(m/μs) 12.50 7 4.33 29.09 710.07
12.647 3.00
17.28 7 1.65
12.4 71.84 15.28 7 1.39
67 Dart vL7* (m/μs)
14.91 70.94 –
11.22 7 1.02 65
16.74 71.60 13.04 70.89
Dart
vL8(m/μs) 10.577 0.24 12.417 2.84
16.187 3.22 16.28 7 2.50
10.99 7 0.69 52 Dart
10.767 0.98
vL9(m/μs) 17.60 7 1.21 18.677 1.70 63
18.017 1.13
Dart
vL10* (m/μs) – 10.46 7 0.95 92
10.46 7 0.95
Dart

n
Only the final period of Leader L7 and L10 radiate detectable VHF signals, so the velocities are listed only in the lower portions of the channel.

in good agreement with literatures (Rakov and Uman, 2003;

Uman, 2001). The dart stage of the dart-stepped leaders develop
with speed (1.0∼1.3)
107 m/s, similar but slightly slower than the
typical dart leader; while in the stepped stage, the velocities get
down to (2.4∼6.8)
106 m/s, about an order higher than those of
typical stepped leaders.

4.1.2. E-change and dE/dt characteristic

Fig. 5. dE/dt signatures for L4∼L6 in a 120 ms time window.
channels. The parameters of these leaders are listed in Table 3 and
summarized as follows.
4.1.1. 3D velocity
The 3D velocity of stepped leader and dart leaders are
(1.3∼3.9)
105 m/s and (1.0∼2.9)
107 m/s respectively, which is
Fig. 5 presents the typical dE/dt waveshapes of the three types
of leaders. Stepped leaders behave impulsive pulses, and the
stepped stages of dart-stepped leaders are always associated with
regular pulse trains. The same is true for E-changes, and they are
consistent with previous observations (Davis, 1999; Krider et al.,
1977).
All five dart leaders and the dart stages of two dart-stepped
leaders exhibit irregular (also termed “chaotic”) E or dE/dt ap-
pearances, as shown in Fig. 5(c). “Chaotic” E or dE/dt waveshapes
usually last along with the entire process of dart leaders (like L6).
These “chaotic” radiations would keep very weak until the leader
enters the less conductive channels, which coincides with VHF
observations (like L7).
4.1.3. VHF radiation characteristic
VHF radiation could not only be utilized to locate the devel-
opment of leaders, but also help reveal leader characteristics. VHF
radiation interval is a useful indication of leader conditions. The
36 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38

s 500 40

s
400
30 Transition
Interval /

Interval /
300
region
20
200

100
10

536 538 540 542 544 546 548 550 598.7 598.8 598.9 599 599.1 599.2 599.3
t /ms t /ms

14
8
12
s

s
7
Interval /

Interval /
10

6 8

5 6

665.55 665.6 665.65 665.7 665.75 665.8 665.85 730.87 730.88 730.89 730.9 730.91 730.92 730.93 730.94 730.95 730.96
t /ms t /ms

Fig. 6. VHF segments intervals of leader L4∼L7.

80 600.55 80 666.58
z:5.24
z:4.63
z:4.80
70 70 z:4.21
599.02 665.90
z:4.99
60 60
Transition region z:3.65
598.87 665.83
50 (~2.5km) 50 z:2.48
z:2.87
z:2.18 z:2.70
z:1.94
40 598.79 40 665.76

z:1.38
30 30
598.74 665.68

20 20

z:0.50
598.68 665.61
10 10

0 598.62 0 665.51
100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190

RS
E t

L5
RS
E

Fig. 7. TVLS observation of L5 (a)VHF location; (b) dE/dt waveforms in digital unit
(du); (c) E-changes, RS denotes return stroke, the vertical short line below wave-
forms in (b) and (c) indicate the triggered VHF records. Fig. 8. TVLS observation of L6 (a) TVLS location with height (km) labeled; (b) dE/dt
waveforms in digital unit(du); (c) E-changes.

intervals of stepped leaders are usually in the order of several tens leaders. More intensive VHF radiations would be generated when
of microseconds, and tend to decrease while approaching ground, the leader enter less conductive channels, which is illustrated in L6
which may be generated by more step formations by the si- an L7 process in Section 3.2.
multaneous extended branches. Dart leaders radiate VHF emission
continuously, so the VHF intervals keep very low (illustrated in 4.2. Discussions about the “chaotic” leader
Fig. 6). Moreover, in conjunction with E-change and dE/dt wave-
forms, VHF radiation could help to infer the channel condition of The term “chaotic leader” was first introduced by Weidman
 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38 37

Table 4
80 730.96
Contrast between different observations about the “chaotic” leader.

70
730.94
Sampling rate Duration (μs) Velocity Horizontal ran-
(MSa/s) (
107 m/s) ges (km)
60

730.93 Davis (1999) 20 130 or 200 3.2 or 5.0 26

50 Gomes et al. 2 or 20 400 500 n/a 10∼100
(2004)
40 730.92 Lan et al. 100 95∼1445 2 5∼15
(2011)
30 Hill et al. 250 10∼13 2.0∼4.3 o1
730.90
(2012)
20 This study 10 300∼700 1.0∼1.8 2.56

730.88
10
data, Stolzenburg et al. (2014) divide the dart leader into three
0
100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
730.27 types: continuous dart, dart-stepped, and “chaotic” leaders. The
“chaotic” leaders characterized by “chaotic” E-changes were often
associated with simultaneous branches. However, they found none
of the data resemble a continuous dart leader.
RS Hill et al. (2012) present the first published observations of
“chaotic” dart leaders in triggered-lightning discharges. They re-
gard “chaotic” leaders as another form of continuous dart leader
E t

“because the overall characteristics of the leader process closely

resemble those of a typical dart leader with superimposed irre-
gular sequences of pulses in the electric field derivative signature
observed in the bottom 200 m of the leader channel.” The short
duration (10∼12 μs) of the observed “chaotic” component com-
L7 pared to other studies was attributed to the relatively low system
RS
sensitivity.
E

Table 4 summarized characteristics by different observations

Fig. 9. TVLS observation of L7 (a)VHF location; (b) dE/dt waveforms in digital unit
(du); (c) E-changes.
(1982) to describe the irregular electric field pulse sequences ob-
served prior to the return stroke field peak: “It is interesting that
about one-third (10 of 32) of the subsequent strokes which trig-
gered the storage oscilloscope in 1979 were preceded by dart-
stepped leaders. Stepping was present on most of the remaining
records as well, but the fields had a more chaotic appearance.”
Thereafter, the term “chaotic leaders” were more often used to
distinguish the regular pulses in dart-stepped leaders. However, if
the “chaotic leader” is a special type of dart leaders, what is the
“normal” dart leader like?
Leader processes were analyzed in detail by Davis (1999) from
multiple-station dE/dt measurements in Florida. Regular dE/dt
pulse trains were identified as typical appearance for dart-stepped
leaders. Besides, subsequent leaders exhibited irregular pulses
were also reported, which were classified as either “chaotic” or
“normal” leaders without distinction. Only two in twelve of these
leaders could be located due to their irregular waveshapes, with
the average speeds 3.2
107 m/s and 5.0
107 m/s. …
Based on the time-correlated high-speed video and E-change
about the “chaotic” leader, along with the normal dart leader of
this study. It is noteworthy that both the duration and velocities of
the normal dart leaders presented here are in good agreements
with previous reports about “chaotic” leaders (Davis, 1999; Gomes,
et al., 2004; Hill et al., 2011; Lan et al., 2011; Weidman, 1982). For
the leaders we analyzed, dart leaders or dart stages of dart-step-
ped leaders always behave “chaotic” E and dE/dt waveshapes.
Moreover, the magnitudes of these “chaotic” signals are closely
related to VHF radiations. In the period with pronounced “chaotic”
fluctuations, VHF radiations are usually continuous and active,
which is also supported by Hill et al. (2012) and Lan et al. (2011). In
contrast, while the “chaotic” fluctuations get weak, such as the
beginning 0.6 ms of L7, triggered VHF segments are very rare. It is
well known that VHF radiation is generated by breakdown process
(Rakov and Uman, 2003; Uman, 2001); therefore, the continuous
VHF radiation means that continuous breakdown processes occur,
so it is reasonable to infer that the channel is less conductive at
that moment. Conversely, the rare VHF radiation along with the
gradual E-changes (as illustrated in the initial 0.6 ms of L7 in Fig. 9
(b)) indicates that the current is flowing along the channel and
therefore the channel is still well conductive.
Based on these observation and inference, it is hypothesized
that the “chaotic” E and dE/dt waveshapes represent electro-
magnetic radiation components in high frequency when dart
leaders passed through less conductive channels, and the so called

Table 3
Characteristic contrast among three types of leaders

Stepped leaders Dart leaders Dart-stepped leaders

Dart stage Stepped stage

Leader index L1,L2,L4 L6,L7,L8,L9,L10 L3,L5

3D velocity (m/s) (1.3∼3.9)
105 (1.0∼2.9)
107 (1.0∼1.3)
107 (2.4∼6.8)
106
E and dE/dt waveshapes impulse irregular irregular impulse
E-change pulse intervals ∼10 ms could not discern could not discern 2∼6 ms
VHF radiation interval decreasing continuous continuous decreasing
38 S. Qiu et al. / Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 136 (2015) 31–38
“chaotic” dart leader is only a manifestation of the channel con-
ditions for dart leaders. As the accumulation effect of multi-
strokes, the repeated main channel usually keep conductive, so
high frequency radiations become weaker, and the E-changes and
dE/dt signatures become smoother and weaker in these con-
ductive portions. For verifying this view, further observations
would be conducted.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant 61301063). The paper finally thank the
anonymous referees.
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