These sensors detect cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and determine their location by triangulation of two or more lines of bearing. An ALDF automatically detects more than 90% of all cloud-to-ground lightning occurring within a range of 100 km. Other lightning, such as cloud-to-cloud and intracloud lightning, is ignored. The National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) is a network of more than 130 of these ALDF sensors.

• KSC-ER Validation

Thirty-one advanced field mills developed by NASA/MSFC are deployed at sites around the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Station provide data on lightning activity and surface electric fields induced by charge aloft. This data helps forecasters determine when electric charge aloft may be sufficient to create triggered lightning during launch, and to determine when to issue and cancel lightning advisories and warnings.

• NWSO Melbourne Total Lightning Initiative
  
• KSC-ER Validation

In several field campaigns, these field mills have been installed on the top and bottom of a DC-8 and an ER-2 aircraft. With this configuration, the field mills are used to measure the vertical component of the electric field as the aircraft flies in the vicinity of electrified clouds. The dynamic range of these instruments extends from the fair weather fields (a few tens of V/m) to large thunderstorm fields (thousands of V/m). Using these field mills, it is possible to detect both intracloud and cloud-to-ground lightning from the abrupt electric field changes in the data. The field mills were developed by NASA/MSFC.

During numerous flights, a conductivity probe has been installed on the superpod nose cone of the ER-2 aircraft and has been used to measure the conductivity of the atmosphere. The probe consists of a pair of Gerdien capacitor type sensors so that the contributions to the total conductivity due to positive and negative ions are obtained simultaneously throught each flight. Storm electric currents have been derived using electric field and air conductivity measurements.

The optical pulse sensor consists of a photodiode at the focus of a wide angle field-of-view lens, and was used to observe the bright flashes of light produced during a lightning discharge. During the mid 1980s, this instrument was flown on a high altitude aircraft to observe lightning from above cloud top. A bandpass filter was installed at the front of the lens and was used to pass one specific lightning spectral line, such as the neutral atomic oxygen line (777.4 nm) or the neutral atmoic nitrogen line (868.3 nm).

This instrument is an Ebert spectrometer which was used to measure the spectral characteristics of lightning discharges. The spectral range of this instrument is from below 600 nm to almost 900 nm (infrared spectrum). This instrument was also flown on a high altitude aircraft during the mid 1980s.