TECHNOLOGY
Dynamic Measurement’s patented and proprietary technology, the Dynamic Natural Source Electromagentic Method (D.NSEMSM) combines and connects the data of lightning strikes with geophysical analysis of the earth. Each cloud-to-ground strike is recorded by a network of sensors. Dynamic Measurement analyzes the following key measurements:
- Location – Where the strike occurred
- Accuracy of location
- Time & Duration – When the strike commenced and how long it lasted
- Rise Time – Time, in microseconds, required to reach peak current
- Peak Current
- Peak-to-Zero – Time, in microseconds, required to regress from peak current to zero or unrecordable current
- Polarity
- Number of Sensors – Number of sensors that record the strike
Traditional thinking correlates lightning strike location to topography, trees, and infrastructure (oil and gas wells, pipelines, facilities, radio towers, cell towers, wind turbines, etc.). While topography, trees, and infrastructure each have an impact on strike location, none of them are the fundamental cause of lightning strike location nor intensity. Our projects and analysis over the years have led to two main findings:
- Lightning strikes vary spatially. This means lightning is more likely to strike in some places than other places.
- The spatial distribution of lightning strikes is consistent from year to year, again indicating that certain areas are more prone than others to experience repeated strikes. This is easily seen once noise and bias are removed from the data.
The Dynamic Measurement Method explains that the consistent distribution indicates the strike is controlled by geologic factors, specifically telluric currents. While lightning is primarily a meteorological phenomenon – there is more lightning where there are more storms – the location of a strike is not.
