Atmospheric Electricity brings together numerous studies on various aspects of atmospheric electricity. This book is composed of 13 chapters that cover the main problems in the field, including the maintenance of the negative charge on the earth and the origin of the charges in thunderstorms. After a brief overview of the historical developments of atmospheric electricity, this book goes on dealing with the general principles, results, methods, and the MKS system of the field. The succeeding chapters are devoted to some aspects of electricity in the atmosphere, such as the occurrence and detection of ions, the air-Earth conduction current, and point-discharge and precipitation currents. These topics are followed by discussions on the maintenance of the Earth's charge; the correlation of Earth's charge with thunderstorm activity and current; and mechanism of charge transfer in nonstormy rain and snow. The concluding chapters consider the phenomena of thunder cloud and the lightning discharge. These chapters also examine various theories in understanding the separation of Earth's charge. This book will be of value to physicists, atmospheric scientists, and researchers in the allied fields.

These Proceedings are published to give a full account of the Fifth International Conference on Atmospheric Electricity held in September 1974 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps in Germany. Traditionally, the Proceedings of these Conferences have served as reference books updating the textbooks and monographs on Atmospheric Electricity. As treated by these Conferences, Atmos pheric Electricity covers all aspects of this science, including the processes and problems which reach out into the Earth's environment as well as analogous processes on other planets and on the Moon. A history of these Conferences, an account of their purpose, and an outline of the scope and the preparation is to be found at the end of these Proceedings. There, also the Business Meetings of the involved organizations are mentioned. The Proceedings closely follow the original program and are accordingly organized into "Sessions". The papers printed in each "Session" in this book are the ones which were accepted for the sessions of the Conference with the same numbers and titles. Only the two "Special Sessions" have been given different numbers in the Proceedings, i.e. 2a and 10. In principle, all papers which were accepted by the Executive Panel either for full oral presentation or for printing in the Proceedings only, have in fact been included in these Proceedings, whether they were presented or not. In the latter case, a special note is made to explain the absence of a discussion.

Bubbles of hydrogen and methane carry soil radon, the main ionizer of surface air, into the surface atmosphere. As a consequence of ionization, light ion pairs are formed that determine the polar conductivity of the surface air; light ions’ aggregation with neutral condensation nuclei gives heavy ions, primarily responsible for the atmospheric electric field. As such, the density of hydrogen and methane subvertical flows will determine local electrical characteristics of the surface atmospheric air. Geological heterogeneities, deformations, and seismic and hydrogeological activity can change the density of hydrogen and methane flows. This book brings together extensive material from field observations to illustrate the possible use of atmospheric-electrical monitoring to solve problems of applied geophysics.

The bibliography of AFCRL in-house technical reports lists all reports issued in the existing series. In addition, appendices list reports issued from 1962 to 1964 when series designations were not used, and reports issued in now-defunct series.

Precipitation plays a significant role in the climate system, and this book is the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the processes involved in the generation of clouds, rain, snow and hail; how precipitation is measured; how its distribution has changed over time; and how we still need to make improvements to the way precipitation is measured. It traces our attempts to understand what clouds are, from ancient Greeks to the present day. It also discusses developments in the measurement of precipitation, from rain gauges to satellite techniques, and how these measurements have enabled researchers to estimate global trends, totals, variability and extremes of precipitation. This will be a valuable and fascinating reference for academic researchers in the fields of environmental science and climatology. It will also be of great interest to professionals in water resource and flood management.