Noctilucent Clouds Spread and Mystify

Wired has a feature on noctilucent clouds, once seen only at high latitudes but increasingly visible now lower down the globe. The clouds result from ice crystals at altitudes of 50 miles, higher than five 9s of the atmosphere. What water ice is doing up there, in a region 100 million times drier than the Sahara desert, is only one of the mysteries associated with the clouds. They are a recent phenomenon: the first scientific description of noctilucent clouds was penned in 1885. For a time it was believed that the clouds were an effect resulting from the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano two years before. Since 2002, the clouds have been sighted — and photographed — as far south as Oregon, Colorado, and Utah. Some scientists believe that human-caused climate change is playing a role, but others doubt this. Two satellites are in orbit to study the clouds; NASA's AIM generated this day-by-day movie of clouds in the vicinity of the North Pole during 2008.

Comments

Re:Space Shuttle?

[dilvish_the_damned]

Further proving there were secret shuttle launches in 1885

Re:Or maybe, since temps have flatlined since '99,

[sjames]

Well, not all mankind anyway. We know because of an incontrovertible nice looking graph that pirates keep global temperatures down. As pirates have declined, temperatures have gone up.

Meanwhile, most people don't have ships, so they do the best they can pirating music. Without the ships, parrots, and peg legs, they can't be as effective as sea pirates, so they have to pirate a lot of music (latest RIAA figure: 240% of all music is pirated). The number one hindrance to their diligent efforts to cool the planet before it's too late is the RIAA. So, the RIAA is responsible for global warming, QED.