Atmospheric electric field data observed from two low-latitude Indian stations (2023-2024)
Description
In West Bengal, India, we have set up two electric field mills (EFM-100 by Boltek, https://www.boltek.com/EFM-100C_Manual_121415.pdf) on the rooftops of buildings at a height of ∼30 and ∼60 feet, respectively, at Srikrishna College Bagula (BGL, 23.3306 N, 88.6431) and SKB University Purulia (PRL, 23.3608 N, 86.3395 E). Both sensors are mounted in an inverted position to minimize precipitation noise. The standard range of the EFM-100 sensor is ±20 kV/m. The EFM can detect electric field disturbances up to 30 km from the installation site. The two locations are roughly 235 km apart and nearly at the same latitude. Compared to BGL, a rural location with lower levels of air pollution and electromagnetic noise, PRL is an industrial urban area with higher levels of air pollution. The output of the EFM-100 actually corresponds to a potential gradient popularly known as PG. We termed EFM output as atmospheric electric field (AEF) which is the same as PG. This data set contains fair-weather monthly and seasonal AEF data of 2023-2024 from BGL and PRL. The AEF of BGL location is corrected with a proper correction factor, but the AEF of PRL is the rooftop raw data as obtained from EFM (Faruque et al., 2025).