The Development of the Instrument Field Mill to Measure the Electric Field above Earth's Surface

Abstract

Atmospheric electric field plays an important role in the global circuit. It varies in several orders of magnitudes from the conditions of fair weather to thunderstorm or dust storm. The electric field at ground can act as an alert indicator of the possible damage caused by the severe weather. Recent studies show that the electric field also plays a significant role in the large-scale coupling between the lithosphere, atmosphere and ionosphere. Therefore, the measurement of the electric field above the ground becomes essential. In this study, we developed an instrument field mill which has the features of low cost, low power consumption, tiny size, no need to connect computers, and easy to set up, etc. With these features, we are able to construct a wide network by deploying sets of this instrument in some distant and remote sites to monitor the real-time change of the ground electric field for the studies in various research fields including the precursor of the earthquake. Finally, an outdoor experiment was conducted to show the practical measurement, and the results confirm that this field mill satisfies the requirement of the design goal.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English
Supervisor	Bing-Chih Chen (Supervisor)