STUDYING AN EFFECT OF GLACIOGENIC SEEDING ON LIGHTNING ACTIVITY OF CONVECTIVE CLOUDS

The effect of glaciogenic seeding on the thunderstorm characteristics of 40 hail and hail-dangerous clouds carried out in accordance with the Russian rocket technology of hail suppression is investigated. An unseeded control cloud was selected for each seeded cloud. For this purpose, the parameter ΔV35 was used, which is the volume of the cloud radar echo with reflectivity >35 dBZ above the zero-isotherm level. It was found that seeding leads to statistically significant changes in cloud characteristics at the level p = 0.01. Seeding induces a 4.4-fold increase in the frequency of intracloud discharges, a 3.7-fold increase in the frequency of negative cloud-to-ground discharges, and an almost complete termination of positive cloud-to-ground discharges. Such significant changes in the electrical characteristics of hail and hail-dangerous clouds as a result of seeding may indicate the possibility of artificial control of their lightning activity, as well as the possibility of using these changes for assessing the hail suppression efficiency.