Activities of sprites and elves in the winter season, Japan

Sprites and elves observation has been carried out in three winter seasons in Japan since December 1998. Thirtyfive sprites' features have been imaged with CCD cameras and 95 optical emission from elves have been captured with hi-speed array photometers. The number of events observed on a night is dependent on the occurrence of intense cloud to ground lightning activity and cloud condition above the observation site. Most of the sprites/elves are directly associated with storms produced by a cold front passing over Japan. It is found that sprites/elves appear not only in the west coast of Japan but also above the Pacific Ocean. The average vertical length of winter sprites in the west cost is shorter than that of summer sprites in the US by about a factor of 2. The altitude of the causative thunderstorm for winter sprites and elves is comparatively lower than that of the summer events in the US and the horizontal width of the cloud is sometimes smaller than 30 km. The sprites' detection in winter in Japan suggests the possibility of winter sprite occurrence in Scandinavia and/or Israel where the climate condition is similar to Japan. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.