A new way of analyzing the Schumann Resonances: a statistical approach

Abstract

Seven decades have passed since the Schumann Resonances (SRs) were identified. Since then, their research interest has increased, currently being a topic of significance. Nonetheless, the papers that study their nature from the frequency perspective are in clear majority regarding those who focus on the time domain. To fill this gap in the literature and further characterize the SRs, a method to perform statistical analysis on the SRs signal in the time domain has been developed. For any given segment of data, the analysis performs a Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) of the statistical parameters from a group of previously selected distributions. After that, the best fit among the target distributions is selected through the application of Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). The method is tested by analyzing a month’s worth of data, showing the general analysis’ results and discussing the relationship between the chosen target distributions and common aspects between the time segments fitted to them. The reliability of the method’s results is also discussed by looking at different aspects of the analysis. Special emphasis is put over the results being correlated with lightning activity. This correlation highlights the usefulness of the method, given the well established relationship between lightning and SRs.