Results of vertical electric field monitoring in Lake Baikal

The electric field of the hydrosphere can be used for monitoring various geophysical processes. Practical implementation of such monitoring requires sufficiently reliable measurements of the field and separation of the contributions from different sources. The present work endeavors to successively solve these tasks in the scope of the experiment on monitoring the vertical voltage in Lake Baikal. Similar monitoring has been conducted previously; however, insufficient reliability of the measurements limited the progress in data interpretation. Since then, we have designed a new instrumental complex, capable of highly accurate measurements and controlling the potential noise sources. For the first time, the flow-induced field is compared with the direct flow velocity measurements. The first results show the flow-induced field is predominant at periods of up to ten days. However, this analysis leaves unclear the origin of variations with a period of about 100 days.