NASA Snaps Mysterious "Night-Shining" Clouds

coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has captured some pretty impressive images of the Alluring noctilucent (or "night-shining") clouds. These clouds are made up of ice crystals and dust and are formed at high altitudes near the poles. "Very little is known about how these clouds form over the poles, why they are being seen more frequently and at lower latitudes than ever before, or why they have been growing brighter. AIM will observe two complete cloud seasons over both poles, documenting an entire life cycle of the shiny clouds for the first time. 'It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means,' stated AIM principal investigator James Russell III of Hampton University, Hampton, Va. 'These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed.'"

Comments

Visible in Ohio.

[mpathetiq]

I've seen these a few times over the last years. The examples I saw weren't as brilliant as the ones in the summary (more along the lines of http://www.spaceweather.com/nlcs/gallery2007_page1.htm), but they are still very beautiful. I never realized they were a special subset of clouds.

Re:While little is known about these clouds...

[sumdumass]

It is? Could it be that they are cause by the same thing causing global warming and you are placing the context in the wrong area?

Something that has simply amazed me for a long time now is Freezing Fog. Maybe understanding that could lead to a better understanding of these clouds and your conclusion of global warming.

Re:Best quote ever!

[OriginalArlen]

Before you get on your high horse and start saying it's just a theory, or a conspiracy by envirofascists or something, how about learning a bit about what we do know, what we don't know, and the degrees of uncertainty to each. Great. You now have what we call an "informed opinion"... and as such you recognise that you didn't actually have a clue what you were talking about when you posted that comment.

These Clouds are Filamentary

[pln2bz]

If you go through these pictures ...

http://www.spaceweather.com/nlcs/gallery2007_page9.htm

Nearly every single cloud structure is filamentary. People will surely say it's blasphemous to use the E-word, but structures like these ...

http://www.spaceweather.com/nlcs/images2007/16jun07/Heden1.jpg

Are what you get in the laboratory with *electrical* plasmas. It's the same structure that you get in a novelty plasma globe. These look exactly like Birkeland Currents to me. I'm not even sure that "clouds" is the proper term for these things, given their proximity to space. Even the overhead view from the article in question demonstrates filamentation.

Re:These Clouds are Filamentary

[pln2bz]

Perhaps you'd have a different first guess after studying waves (and "clouds") and fractal geometry in the absence of a governing electric or magnetic field. You've got to avoid getting tunnel-vision when you try to figure out new things, and having a wide understanding is a good way to do it.

Everything you've said is certainly true. But the debate over electrical space plasmas has a rich history by now. The arguments that space plasmas can become highly electrical are solid arguments that have not been tested, and which repeatedly do not make the list of interpretations for space observations even though the arguments have persisted for 10 - 20 years now. One would expect that if the thermonuclear core model for the Sun were true that we'd see the evidence trending in that direction, but an objective observer would notice in fact that the arguments for Don Scott's Electric Sun Hypothesis have, if anything, gained in strength with modern observations. There still, for instance, remains no good explanation for how the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets without concluding that the solar wind is being accelerated by a weak electric field centered at the Sun. This is a major problem that rarely gets the attention that it deserves. Furthermore, Kristian Birkeland's terella experiments from the turn of the century have over time demonstrated an eerie ability to predict our observations of space. The Hinode spacecraft has demonstrated that X-Ray "jets" originating from the Sun are much more common than previously thought. Few astrophysicists are even aware that Birkeland's solar model predicted it. At least one of Birkeland's laboratory images is so identical to Io during eclipse that the two images, side by side, cannot possibly be discriminated by the most experienced astrophysicists out there. If it was just the noctilucent clouds, I would agree with you. But the number of correspondences is becoming quite high by now.

When astrophysicists noticed that galactic rotation curves were not as they should be relative to what we know of how gravity works for smaller structures nearer to us, it was inferred that the proper solution to this problem was to add more matter that we just weren't able to see. Since then, astrophysicists have learned that their assumptions that space is a vacuum were wrong, and that space is instead filled with charged particles (plasma). Furthermore, computer simulations have appeared (by Anthony Peratt) that explain galactic rotation curves using no invisible particles. Peratt determined that he could generate the proper curves merely by adjusting the fluids-based plasma equations to reflect the more electrodynamic properties of plasmas that we observe within plasma physics laboratories. In other words, spiral galaxies are a natural byproduct of electrical plasma simulations.

Consider also that Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of the Deep Impact mission, which an objective, independent observer could fairly interpret as a violation of quasi-neutrality. Thornhill was able to accurately predict the results of that mission by assuming that the Tempel 1 comet was a charged body possessing a different electrical charge than Deep Impact's impactor. NASA unfortunately dismissed his prediction, despite the fact that he was the only one that accurately predicted two separate flashes at the time of impact. Arguments that the second flash represented a post-impact flash (rather than Thornhill's pre-impact flash) are easily discounted based upon the fast speed of the projectile (23,000 mph) relative to the thinness of the dust layer (10 feet) that is alleged to have existed. Simple algebra demands that the delay associated with these two flashes do not correspond with this dust layer explanation.

My point is that there are historical reasons for suggesting that filaments may represent electrical plasmas -- especially when the polar regions are concerned. Clearly, the magnetosphere dire

Re:Off topic? Dumb mods

[Xinef Jyinaer]

Hand over your geek card for not recognizing that his reference was incorrect anyway: "At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?".

Re:These clouds are a clear symptom of global warm

[dgatwood]

In fact, the electrolyte imbalance caused by consuming too much DHMO can kill you, too.

Re:Heh...

[tjstork]

I disagree. I look at Global Warming as the cause like I look to the latest code change as the cause of a never before seen software bug.

Well, that makes the flawed assumption that the earth's climate behaviors linearly and predictibly. It doesn't and therefor, it can't. There's nothing about our climate that guarantees that we should be in any steady state, and geologically speaking, the earth's climate has bounced all over the place. Sure, you might argue that there is some asthetic utility to balancing out the CO2 level in the air, and correctly so, but you shouldn't argue that doing so will guarantee a more or less habital planet, because it doesn't.

Re:Best quote ever!

[moosesocks]

Precisely.

Atmospheric Science heavily relies upon taking what little data we *do* know, and extrapolating as much useful information as we possibly can out of it.

And it actually works pretty well... "anomalies" that have turned up in forecast models very often turn out to actually exist in reality. It was this way that we determined that a considerable amount of ash and pollution produced by industrial activity in Asia gets blown all the way to North America. It was so counterintuitive that nobody had ever thought to test for it before the forecast model suggested that it was happening quite readily.

If you also want to see something really scary, read up on the CFC Ozone depleting reaction. If it weren't for a few seasonal processes that restore the Ozone, and more importantly, wash out the CFCs, we'd have burned off our entire atmosphere in just a few years.

Re:"steamed hams"?

[aadvancedGIR]

Actually, the major point is that the other developped countries have understood that, with the rapidly increasing cost of the energy they have to import, using their technological advance to reduce their oil dependance is a long term economical winning move. The fact that it might help the environment is nothing more than a fortunate side effect.
The american problem is that they are governed by people who have a personnal interest in keeping their country in a high oil dependance.