Upgrading of the ATD lightning location system at The Met Office (UK)

The Met. Office (UK NMS) has operated a VLF ?arrival time difference? (ATD) thunderstorm location system since 1986. This system can detect up to 400 lightning strokes per hour. The current hardware upgrade and software enhancement efforts will result in the capability of processing 10000 to 12000 lightning strokes per hour and determining the flash type (cloud to ground or cloud to cloud), stroke polarity, stroke strength and the number of strokes per event for lightning occurring over the UK.

ATD consists of five outstations located in the United Kingdom with two additional outstations located in Gibraltar and Cyprus. A great benefit of this system is it's long range capability, especially over the oceans. With the upgrade, the detection efficiency will increase dramatically, along with a vast improvement in the coverage and reliability of the system.

The operation of the upgraded system, the techniques used and results obtained will be presented.