PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF SPACE CHARGE IN THE LOWER ATMOSPHERE Partial Final Report No. 1

摘要

Measurements from a small airplane have been made of the vertical distribution of the fair weather atmospheric electrical potential gradient. The measurements, the majority of which were made over Eastern Massachusetts, show large departures from the classical picture of the variation of the electric field with altitude. Usually there are one or more regions in the lower atmosphere in which the potential gradient increases rather than decreases with increasing altitude. These regions usually are found at inversions and at haze levels that probably mark dis-continuities in the atmospheric conductivity. These measurements show that frequently there are regions of negative as well as positive space charge in the lower atmosphere.