Premium
Observation of sprites over the Asian continent and over oceans around Taiwan
Author(s) -
Su HanTzong,
Hsu RueRon,
Chen Alfred BingChih,
Lee YiJen,
Lee LouChuang
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2001gl013737
Subject(s) - sprite (computer graphics) , thunderstorm , effects of high altitude on humans , meteorology , altitude (triangle) , light emission , geology , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , climatology , geography , physics , computer science , computer vision , geometry , mathematics , optoelectronics
Sprites were observed over thunderstorms in the southern China and in oceans around Taiwan. The observation sites were on the Ali Mountain of Taiwan's Central Ridge area with an altitude of 2413 m and in the campus of National Cheng Kung University with an altitude of 50 m. For the observed land sprites, 90% of them were either carrots or columniforms and 64% of the sprites occurred in groups. Among the observed oceanic sprites, 89% of them were carrots but only 22% of the sprites occurred in groups. We define a sprite active system as a thunderstorm that continuously produces at least one sprite in a 10‐minute interval. The active sprites generating periods for the observed thunderstorms were typically shorter than 30 minutes. The sprite production rates for these Asian thunderstorms are estimated to be between I ≈ 2 × 10 −4 events/km 2 /hr and I ≈ 1 × 10 −3 events/km 2 /hr.