Observation of sprites over the Asian continent and over oceans around Taiwan

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/ km²/hr and I ≈ 1 × 10^-3 events/km²/hr.