Massive Outbreak of Red Sprites in South Asia Observed from the Tibetan Plateau

On 19 May 2022, an outbreak of 105 red sprites that occurred over South Asia was fortuitously recorded by two amateurs from a site in the southern Tibetan Plateau (TP), marking the highest number captured over a single thunderstorm in South Asia. Nearly half of these events involved dancing sprites, with an additional 16 uncommon secondary jets and at least four extremely rare green emissions called “ghosts” observed following the associated sprites. Due to the absence of the precise timing needed to identify parent lightning, a method based on satellite motion trajectories and star fields is proposed to infer video frame timestamps within an error of less than one second. After verifying 95 sprites from two videos, our method identified the parent lightning for 66 sprites (~70%). The sprite-producing strokes, mainly of positive polarity with peak currents exceeding +50 kA, occurred in the stratiform region of a mesoscale convective complex (MCC) that spanned the Ganges Plain to the southern TP, with a cloud area over 200 000 km² and a minimum cloud-top black body temperature near 180 K. This observation confirms that thunderstorms in South Asia, akin to mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) in the Great Plains of the United States or coastal thunderstorms in Europe, can produce numerous sprites, including complex species. Our analysis bears important implications for characterizing thunderstorms above the southern TP and examining their physical and chemical effects on the adjacent regions, as well as the nature of the coupling between the troposphere and middle-upper atmosphere in this region.