Global lightning distribution and whistlers observed at Dunedin,

Abstract. Whistlers observed at Dunedin, New Zealand, are an enigma since they do not conform to the classical model of whistler production developed by Storey (1953). It is gener-ally accepted that the causative lightning stroke for a whistler observed on the ground at a particular location was located in the neighbourhood of the conjugate point, and generated an electromagnetic signal which propagated in a plasmas-pheric duct stretched along a magnetic field line linking the two hemispheres. The causative stroke is thought to have oc-curred within reasonable proximity of one footpoint of this field line, while the observer was located in the vicinity of the other footpoint. Support for this model has come from a number of previous studies of whistler-lightning observa-tions and whistler-induced particle precipitation. However, as demonstrated here, this model does not always apply