Abstract: To study the difference between characteristics of lightning return strokes occurring on tall structures with different heights, comprehensive observations for 58 natural downward negative cloud-to-ground lightning flashes with confirmed grounding points are analyzed. When heights of grounding points are below 200 m, the arithmetic mean and geometric mean values for the number of strokes per flash, inter-stroke intervals, peak currents of the first strokes, peak currents of the subsequent strokes, 10%-90% rise times of the first stroke optical pulses, widths from 10% wave front to 50% wave tail of the first stroke optical pulses, 10%-90% rise times of the subsequent stroke optical pulses, and widths from the 10% wave front to the 50% wave tail of the subsequent stroke optical pulses are estimated to be about 3.7 and 1 (33 samples), 95 ms and 66 ms (15 flashes containing 95 strokes), -57.9 kA and-43.8 kA (30 samples), -34.1 kA and-30.8 kA (68 samples), 3.8 μs and 3.1 μs (17 samples), 38.1 μs and 32.5 μs (17 samples), 2.2 μs and 2.0 μs (19 samples), 52.9 μs and 35.0 μs (19 samples), while values are estimated to be about 2.6 and 1 (22 samples), 94 ms and 57 ms (10 flashes containing 41 strokes), -104.3 kA and-92.9 kA (24 samples), -50.1 kA and-42.6 kA (32 samples), 28.3 μs and 22.7 μs (13 samples), 119.8 μs and 110.5 μs (13 samples), 10.1 μs and 8.8 μs (4 samples), 126.5 μs and 124.8 μs (4 samples) when heights of grounding points are greater than 200 m. On the whole, the number of strokes per flash and inter-stroke intervals of flashes occurring on structures taller than 200 m and those lower than 200 m are close. But peak currents of the first strokes, peak currents of the subsequent strokes, 10%-90% rise times of the first stroke optical pulses, widths from 10% wave front to 50% wave tail of the first stroke optical pulses, 10%-90% rise times of the subsequent stroke optical pulses, widths from the 10% wave front to 50% wave tail of the subsequent stroke optical pulses for the flashes occurring on structures taller than 200 m are greater than those occurring on structures lower than 200 m, and arithmetic mean (geometric mean) values of the former are 1.8 (2.1), 1.5 (1.4), 7.4 (7.4), 3.1 (3.4), 4.6 (4.3), 2.4 (3.6) times of the latter.