LOFAR Lightning Imaging; Mapping Lightning with Nanosecond Precision

Lightning mapping technology has proven instrumental in understanding lightning. In this work we present a pipeline that can use lightning observed by the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) radio telescope to construct a 3D map of the flash. We show that LOFAR has unparalleled precision, on the order of meters, even for lightning flashes that are over 20 km outside the area enclosed by LOFAR antennas (∼3,200 km), and can potentially locate over 10,000 sources per lightning flash. We also show that LOFAR is the first lightning mapping system that is sensitive to the spatial structure of the electrical current during individual lightning leader steps. Keypoints: • We can map lightning leader evolution with the LOFAR radio telescope in 3 dimensions • The position accuracy can be on the order of meters above a surface area of 3,200 km and the timing accuracy is around 5 ns Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Linnuniversitetet, 35195 Växjö, Sweden c ©2018 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. • LOFAR is sensitive to the current distribution in space within individual leader steps c ©2018 American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.