Abstract:In order to understand the distribution characteristics of lightning parameters for mountain and plain areas and their difference, and to bring up reference opinions on lightning protection engineering design and lightning risk assessment, the study utilizes the lightning monitoring data from December 2006 to December 2016, by mathematical statistics method, to make a contrastive analysis about the distribution characteristics of the frequency, polarity, peak current, and wave front steepness. The results show that the density of cloudtoground (CG) lightning in the mountain area was higher than that in the plain area; the percentage of positive CG lightning in the plain area was higher than that in the mountain area; and the percentage of positive flashes in the past 10 years had an increasing trend. The average intensity of positive CG lightning in the mountain area was 1.16 kA greater than that in the plain area, and the average intensity of negative CG lightning in the mountain area is 3.67 kA smaller than that in plain area, and intensity of total CG lightning in the plain area is 3.46 kA greater than that in the mountain area. The probability of lightning peak current (≥30 kA in the mountain area, 8.9% greater than that in the plain area). As the lightning peak current was greater than 100 kA, the probability in the plain area was 0.6% greater than that in the mountain area. The average steepness of positive CG lightning in the mountain area was 2.44 kA/μs and 2.31 kA/μs greater than that of negative and total CG lightning respectively, and the average steepness of positive, negative, and total CG lightning in the plain area was 3.41 kA/μs, 5.77 kA/μs, and 5.64 kA/μs greater than those in the mountain area, respectively. It shows that the probability of shielding failure in the mountain area is higher than that in the plain area, and the damage of positive CG lightning induction was greater than that of negative and total CG lightning; the occurrence of back flashover in plain is higher than that in the mountain area, and the damage of lightning induction was greater than that in the mountain area.