CLUSTERING STRUCTURES IN THE TIME-OCCURRENCE SERIES OF LIGHTNING

Lightning data, measured from April to October 2002 in an area of northern Italy, have been analyzed by using the Allan Factor statistics. The sequence of lightning time-occurrences is characterized by two scaling regions, which reveal intra-cluster (inside an individual thunderstorm) and inter-cluster (among successive thunderstorms) time-clustering properties of lightning data. We investigated intra- and inter-cluster correlations for three classes of lightning: (i) the whole series, (ii) the sequence of only negative flashes and (iii) that of only positive flashes. Furthermore, we performed the analysis of the scaling behavior of the three classes of lightning varying the current intensity threshold.