On Effectiveness of Monitoring the Electrical State of Clouds by Remote Radiophysical Instruments in the Near Zone

Results of field experiments with thunderstorms (northwest of the European part of Russia and India) in the near zone (the distance from the fluxmeter does not exceed 50–60 km) are analyzed. The cloud state is monitored by the C-band Doppler radar (DMRL-C) (Russia), Blitzortung (Russia) and MLDN (India) lightning detection systems, and the system of ground-based fluxmeters. It is shown that the fluxmeters register a significantly larger number of cloud-to-ground lightning flashes in the near zone than Blitzortung and MLDN.