Abstract
We analyze and describe trains of regular unipolar microsecond‐scale magnetic field pulses produced by intracloud lightning discharges. Waveforms of the magnetic field are measured using a newly developed broadband analyzer with a sampling interval of 12.5 ns. The observed trains contained several tens of pulses, and the time interval between neighboring pulses typically varied between 1 and 10 µs. The amplitude of the pulses also varied by 1 order of magnitude. A systematic analysis of these variations is done for the first time. The interpulse interval is usually increasing (on average by 4.1 µs during a train), and the pulse amplitude is decreasing (on average by 15% of the maximum value within a given train). We propose a possible generation mechanism based on a hypothesis that periodical charge structures are present in the thundercloud. This mechanism can explain the observed evolution of peak amplitudes and interpulse intervals.
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