What are Elves and Sprites in Earth's atmosphere?

Lightning storm activity in the troposphere produces transient luminous events (TLEs) in the region between the troposphere and the ionosphere; see Figure 1. TLEs act as a source of dynamic interference in the ionosphere, making skywave propagation less predictable and potentially affecting the reliability of long-distance radio communication.

Elves, Sprites, and Blue Jets—Transient Luminous Events (TLEs)↗

Figure 1: The different forms of Transient Luminous Events Credit: NOAA

• Elves are short-lived (lasting only milliseconds) and appear as a flattened, glowing disk. They are thought to be caused by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a lightning strike, which excites nitrogen molecules in the ionosphere (between 70 and 100 km above the Earth's surface), causing them to emit light.
• Sprites appear as large but weak reddish or orange-ish flashes of light high above powerful lighting storms, typically between 50 and 90 kilometers above the surface.
• Blue jets are also types of TLEs that occur between 40 and 50 kilometers above the surface.

References:
1. NASA Solar Mission Resumes Normal Data Flow (2025) ^NASA
2. Severe Weather 101: Lightning Types Descriptions of various types of lightning (2025) ^{NSSL NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory}
3. Sprites, Camera, Action! (2024) ^NASA
4. Spritacular: Project to Capture Elusive Upper Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena on Camera (2022) ^NASA
5. ICON - Ionospheric Connection Explorer ^Wikipedia
6. Sprite (lightning) ^Wikipedia
7. Upper-atmospheric lightning ^Wikipedia
8. The most otherworldly, mysterious forms of lightning on Earth ^{National Geographic}
9. What's the difference between red sprites and regular lightning, and why is there so much mystery around them? ^Quora
10. Genesis of column sprites: Formation mechanisms and optical structures (2023) ^{Robert Marskar, Norway}
11. Rare observations of sprites and gravity waves supporting D, E, F-regions ionospheric coupling (2022) ^{Ajeet K. Maurya et al.}
12. Radiation Phenomenon Due to Streamers of Sprites (2022) ^{Meenu Singh et al.}
13. HF-VHF Electromagnetic Emissions From Collisions of Sprite Streamers (2021) ^{M. B. Garnung, S. Celestin, T. Farges}
14. What Is a Sprite? Earth's Super Rare Red Lightning Explained (2023) ^{FOX Weather}
15. Red Sprites and Blue Jets Explained - New Discovery! (2020) ^{Pecos Hank}
16. Blue jets, sprites & elves formed by storm cloud activity (2019) ^{ABC Australia}
17. Transient Luminous Events: Lightning above our atmosphere (2017) ^AccuWeather
18. Lightning: TLEs: Sprites | International Cloud Atlas (2017) ^{World Meteorological Organization}
19. Plasma irregularities in the D-region ionosphere in association with sprite streamer initiation (2014) ^{Jianqi Qin et al.}
20. Lightning phenomena: sprites, elves and blue jets (2013) ^{Government of Canada}
21. Electrical parameters of red sprites (2012) ^{Manoj Kumar Paras and Jagdish Rai}
22. Estimation of electric charge in sprites from optical and radio observations (2011) ^{Jingbo Li and Steven Cummer}
23. Ionospheric Effects of Lightning ^{Univ. of Florida}
24. Catching Sprites by Radio (1999) ^{Meher Antia}