Abstract:The timedomain analysis on waveform change of lightning electric field and the identification of discharge types are one of the most important works in the st udy of lightning detection system. The risetime, falltime, pulsewidth and a series of timedomain features of return strokes and narrow bipolar events we re given through analyzing the fast electric filed change data our system acquir ed. The risetime of the negative returnstroke fields had an average of 2.9μ s, its falltime and pulsewidth were 89μs, 15.4μs on average.The average risetime value of the narrow bipolar events was 1.7μs. The mean of the fallt ime value and pulsewidth value of narrow bipolar events were 2.1μs and 2.4μs , respectively. Some of the results were consistent with other researcher’s, bu t some differences existed which is caused by the different equipment used. Neve rtheless all the waveform features we got was still valuable for the identificat ion. Based on these characteristics, a set of software which could distinguish r eturn strokes and narrow bipolar events automatically from all of the lightning radiations events was designed. The classification results were tested by manual selection of data, and it proved a 90% correctness of identifying negative retu rn strokes and a desired accuracy of identifying positive return strokes and nar row bipolar events. As a preliminary research of the waveform classification of lightning discharge events, this method already has a practical value. It can be used to distinguish cloudtoground lightning, cloudtocloud lightning and narrow bipolar events in the new lightning detection system.