Dr. SUN Zhuling from Institute of Atmospheric Physics was presented Young Scientist Award at the 32nd International Conference on Lightning Protection (ICLP2014) held in Shanghai, China, during Oct. 13-17, 2014.  The award was given to Dr. SUN and the other three young scientists to award their outstanding achievement on lightening research. The ICLP Young Scientist Award was presented to young scientists (below 35 years) who have delivered an oral or poster presentation of high quality at the International Conference on Lightning Protection and have made notable contributions in the field of lightning research and lightning protection.

Dr. SUN gave a presentation on “Development of Short-Baseline Time-Difference of Arrival Location System and Observations on Lightning Discharge” and it was well received at the conference. In her presentation, Dr. SUN introduced her team’s efforts in developing a new lightning VHF radiation location system based on short-baseline time-difference of arrival technology to observe lightning discharge with high temporal and spatial resolution. Dr. SUN designed the whole system structure, wrote the software to control the system and successfully realized the continuous or sequential signal acquisition over the entire duration of a lightning flash as the first case in China. Moreover, Dr. SUN improved the conventional algorithm of delay estimation, and adopted the wavelet analysis algorithm, a generalized cross correlation time delay estimation algorithm and a parabolic interpolation algorithm to improve the system location accuracy. The system has been applied in the SHandong Artificially Triggering Lightning Experiment (SHATLE). A large amount of lightning location data has been obtained for both the rocket-triggered lightning and natural lightning flashes, the progression of lightning discharge channels can now be visually reconstructed, and positive K-change discharge is newly detected.

The ICLP, held every two years, is one of the most famous international conferences on lightning research.This year, 562 scientists from 50 countries attended the conference with 558 papers presented.

Dr. SUN Zhuling(right) and the ICLP Award Committee Member Dr. M.Rubinsteine