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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.'"
writes to tell us that NASA has captured some pretty impressive images of the Alluring noctilucent (or "night-shining") clouds.
At this time of day? localized entirely in your kitchen?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
That may well be entirely true, but I recognize a cousin to the "...and therefore may lead to new treatments for cancer." that molecular biologists ritualistically slap at the end of every grant application.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
We hear too often from these climate "experts", finally someone is ready to admit that our climate is so big and complex that we don't know exactly how it all works.
Even more worryingly, early reports suggest they may contain Dihydrogen Monoxide.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
http://www.spaceweather.com/nlcs/gallery2007_page9.htm has a Noctilucent Cloud gallery. I haven't seen them yet myself, but it'll be interesting to see if AIM manages to find an explanation for them. It's an intriguing mystery!
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
"All right, Beatrice, there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus."
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
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.
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
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.
Global warming is the big scare in the climate world right now, so it is how you get money for environmental research. You write a proposal to study some owl that isn't endangered but might become so that nobody gives a shit about and you get no money. However you change it up and talk about how you want to study the impact of global warming on it, bam you gots money.
Same shit with terrorism in other areas. Can't get money for an anti-crime initiative? Just make it an anti-terror initiative! You get money thrown at you. Hell, ConEd did that with their new superconducting power line. They wanted government help building the thing so they spun it is being resistant to terrorist attack. Maybe true, but that isn't why they are doing it. They are doing it because the old system failed due to overload, not attack.
It is sadly common in the world, and research is no different. You find what is hot in a given field and you'll see all kinds of shit that shouldn't be getting tied in to that to try and get money.
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.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
when the clouds are positioned for coverage around the globe . . .
checkmate
One theory trying to explain these clouds is the X-ray activity of the sun. The sun is a highly variable star when it comes to X-rays. During its 11-year cycle, the X-ray flux emitted by the sun varies by a factor of 15, with ferocious bursts. We are at a solar minimum, so we see few sun spots and the X-ray activity is also lower on average.
I found an article that is short and readable explaining the link between solar cycles and X-rays: http://solar.physics.montana.edu/nuggets/2000/000407/000407.html. Note that the X-ray activity can vary hugely from the current solar minimum to, say, the 2000-2001 solar max.
The problem is that we don't have that much data on it yet. We need to accumulate several cycles worth of observations before we can answer these questions:
* When does the sun emit X-rays? Is it linked to sun spots?
* What do solar X-rays do to the upper atmosphere?
The X-rays are absorbed by the ionosphere (fortunately for life forms), and this energy transfer is not well known. During each solar minimum, less X-rays arrive in the upper atmosphere, which therefore should cool down. Is it the reason why we see these noctilucent clouds? If so, they should start disappearing in a couple of years, when sun spots return.
This is a very interesting keyhole on a yet unknown mechanism. I hope we'll see updates on the subject.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
"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."
"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."
* It could also suggest that documentation has been poor in the past (ref. quote 1) and that the higher rate is because more effort is spent on registering the climate in general.
* It could also suggest a _purely local_ non-human-related change. After all, the middle ages warm period has been discounted by climatologists as a purely half-a-hemisphere local phenomenon. There is hence no reason why the climate should not change in one region of the world alone.
* It could also suggest a _purely local_ human-related change, e.g. if it is related to soot in the atmosphere, or NOx
* It could also suggest a _cyclical_ event, either globally or locally, which the expressions used ('is being changed') alludes away from.
Simply saying "The observations could suggest that XYZ" is an unprofessional statement. All observations could suggest a large number of things - so if it is just a suggestion and you are a professional, do not make a statement on it, while if it is very likely to be, then say that it is likely instead.
In fact, the electrolyte imbalance caused by consuming too much DHMO can kill you, too.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.