The electromagnetic radiation due to a pulsed current point source located above a nonperfectly conducting Earth is investigated. The Cagniard-de Hoop technique with polar variables is used in order to derive closed-form expressions for the electric field above or on the surface of a nonperfectly conducting Earth. Early- and late-time approximations are derived which are tested with an exact method that is presented in this paper. The approximate method yields excellent results and requires far less computation time. Numerical results for the electric field above the Earth are presented for both the exact and the approximate methods. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996