Limitations
Each system used for lightning detection has its own limitations. These include:
- A ground-based lightning network must be able to detect a strike with at least three antennas to locate it with an acceptable margin of error. This often leads to the rejection of cloud-to-cloud lightning, as one antenna might detect the position of the strike on the starting cloud and the other antenna the receiving one. As a result, ground-based networks have a tendency to underestimate the number of strikes, especially at the beginning of storms where cloud-to-cloud lightning is prevalent.
- Since they use attenuation rather than triangulation, mobile detectors sometimes mistakenly indicate a weak lightning strike nearby as a strong one further away, or vice-versa.
- Space-based lightning networks suffer from neither of these limitations, but the information provided by them is often several minutes old by the time it is widely available, making it of limited use for real-time applications such as air navigation.
Read more about this topic: Lightning Detection
Famous quotes containing the word limitations:
“No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they can’t be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by reality—a reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Much of what contrives to create critical moments in parenting stems from a fundamental misunderstanding as to what the child is capable of at any given age. If a parent misjudges a child’s limitations as well as his own abilities, the potential exists for unreasonable expectations, frustration, disappointment and an unrealistic belief that what the child really needs is to be punished.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)