Multi-station inversion and the localization of storms

Multi-station inversion combines simultaneous data from many observation stations distributed across the Earth. This significantly improves the conditioning of the problem from #78: whereas a single station cannot unambiguously separate the sources, a geometrically distributed network of stations provides independent views that make it possible to localize the storm regions and estimate their intensity.

The key benefit is that the intensity can be expressed in absolute units — typically as a source power proportional to C²·km²/s (the square of the charge times area, referred to time) Pracser 2019. This is a fundamental difference from earlier approaches, which gave only relative changes: absolute calibration allows activity to be compared between different days and periods.

The practical realization used a network of 18 stations, whose data were converted by inversion into a day-by-day map of global lightning activity and its absolute intensity Pracser 2019Bozoki 2023. This approach forms a bridge between the theoretical model and a measurable climatological quantity — it quantifies changes in global lightning activity from day to day (related to cluster G).