Description

Sprites:
Flashes in the mesosphere
10-100 ms duration
Generated from +CG
Primarily red
Jets:
Injected from cloud tops
100-1000 ms duration
Generated with or without CG activity
Primarily blue
Elves
Rings of emissions at lower edge of the ionosphere
1-10 ms duration
Stimulated by electromagnetic pulse from lightning
Primarily red
"While the electric force due to the thundercloud falls off rapidly as r increases, the electric force required to cause sparking (which for a given composition of the air is proportional to its density) falls off still more rapidly.

Thus, if the electric moment of a cloud is not too small, there will be a height above which the electric force due to the cloud exceeds the sparking limit.“
The altitude distribution of different time scales characterizing the electrical breakdown associated with sprites [Pasko et al. 1998]
Medium-scale structure ~10km
Gravity waves (Sentman et al., 2003)‏
Constructive interference from many IC discharge elements (Valdivia et al., 1998)‏
Constructive interference from single IC EMP and waves reflected at ground and ionosphere, conditioning the mesosphere for CG+/QE break down (Cho and Rycroft, 2001)‏
Large-scale structure ~100km
Follows expected Quasi-Electrostatic field (QE) exposure

In the TLE, accelerated electrons hit the atoms and molecules of the atmosphere, causing ionization and excitation much as in the aurorae.

Optical emissions come from:
Blue: 1st negative N2+ (1NN2+) and 2nd positive N2 (2PN2) band systems - impulsive
Red: first positive band system of N2 (1PN2) which has the lowest excitation threshold – time averaged effect

Below about 50 km, suppression of (1PN2) due to strong quenching of the B3Πg leads to blue dominating.