Nota Bene: Catching Sprites by Radio

Sprites are upper atmospheric optical phenomena associated with lightning (1, 2). They have been implicated in electrochemical processes in the upper atmosphere (3) and transfer large amounts of charge between different atmospheric regions (4). Further interest comes from a growing body of evidence for perturbation of natural lightning by pollutants, with a recent study showing that smoke advected from southern Mexico into the United States led to large amounts of lightning with positive polarity, as well as an unusually high number of sprites (5).