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Noctilucent Clouds Likely Caused By Shuttle Launches
icebike writes "In our recent discussion of the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds, there was some suggestions that these might be the product of global warming due to moisture being lofted high into the atmosphere. It now appears that these clouds are simply the product of Shuttle launches. In a story about the Tunguska blast, Science News says: 'Each launch of a space shuttle, which burns a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel, pumps about 300 metric tons of water vapor into the atmosphere at altitudes between 100 and 115 kilometers. Soon after the January 16, 2003, launch of the shuttle Columbia, a liftoff that took place just after the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, noctilucent clouds appeared over Antarctica. Similarly, a widespread display of the night-shining clouds showed up over Alaska two days after the shuttle Endeavour blasted off on August 8, 2007. Previous studies show that in both instances those clouds included material from the shuttle plumes.' So, man-made after all?"
Those damn environmentalists were right!
The previous Slashdot thread included the tidbit that the first noctilucent clouds mentioned in recorded history were in 1887 (also noted here). So unless someone was using hydrogen-oxygen rocketry almost a full century before the first shuttle launch, it would seem that they are not purely anthropogenic.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The aliens are showing us somthing interesting and beautiful as a message, telling us to get ourselves to the stars.
Mod parent up. It appears that even TFAuthors don't read TFArticles. (Neither have I)
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Well, there goes my crack headline of "Latest Global Warming Cause : Shuttle Farts".
Almost a full century before the first shuttle launch by humans! Finally we have proof for UFOs! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
first noctilucent clouds mentioned in recorded history were in 1887
1887 was when the term was coined. It is impossible to say whether the phenomenon called "noctilucent clouds" in 1887 is the same phenomenon we see today. For example, Northern lights might qualify as "noctilucent" and may look cloudy to boot. It's important to distinguish the phenomenon from the terminology.
Just callin' it like I see it.
While I suppose the summary could be read that way, the actual article is a little more clear on the distinction. That some other events also cause noctilucent clouds, while true, does not invalidate the premise of the shuttle also causing them.
So mod parent down. Bitch about inaccuracies in the summary if you want, but don't pretend they serve as meaningful parts of the discussion.
Its also quite possible that the recent appearances of these clouds was caused by the shuttle launches dumping lots of water into the upper atmosphere, regardless of what has caused them in the past
Such as from a volcano, which can reach into the stratosphere, not as high as the shuttle, but probably far enough. Or perhaps from the other direction, a (or many) comet burning up in the atmosphere.
Ahah! So, "From the Earth to the Moon" was a documentary, and not fictional (so, it's the opposite of the moon landing shots).
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Finally, solid evidence that the government controls the weather.
JUST when I thought all my conspiracy-theorist friends would have something new to pursue in their spare time...
They we're also photographed back then by some German person. So that shuttle theory can be one explanation to phenomenon but not certainly the only one.
Disregarding the 1887 thing, which is amply discussed above, what amazes me is this:
If these luminous clouds are caused by shuttle launches, why has it taken, 32 years and 128 launches for someone to discover this relation?
Or, has something else happened to the atmosphere not-so-long ago which, together with the launches, have been causing these clouds only recently?
"Good news, everyone!"
Only 300 metric tons? By doing a simple 1 minute Google search I've found that a single cloud weighs on the order of 100 tons-100,000 tons and more. Great bullshit kdawson.
So the volume of shuttle exhaust material is enough to fill a significant portion of the upper atmosphere of the North Pole?
Why don't we see people rolling around choking at shuttle launches as the huge volume of exhaust displaces the breathable atmosphere from sea-level to stratosphere?
Somebody on ./ said this was a likely cause of the clouds. Wow there are smart people in here :-)
The previous Slashdot thread included the tidbit that the first noctilucent clouds mentioned in recorded history were in 1887 (also noted here). So unless someone was using hydrogen-oxygen rocketry almost a full century before the first shuttle launch, it would seem that they are not purely anthropogenic.
Cheers,
Good point. I'm not an astrophysicist or anything, but could meteorite's from carbonaceous chondrites, or micro-comets, ejecting their mass at the clouds' altitude cause the phenomenon naturally?
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
My theory, then, is that they were caused by the advent of photography, in much the same way Color was invented in the 50s.
So, can shuttle launches get "carbon credits"? (I know that they aren't actually reducing carbon emissions but if these clouds reduce global warming perhaps they'd be eligible). Is the amount so negligible that it wouldn't come close to offsetting the (horrendously) expensive launches?
Do other spacecraft (Arianne, Delta, Soyuz) also create these clouds?
NLCs reflect sunlight back into space (lowering the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by some TBD amount). If NLCs increase, will they ever reflect enough sunlight back out into space to moderate the factors that contribute to global warming?
"unless someone was using hydrogen-oxygen rocketry almost a full century before the first shuttle launch"
Werner von Braun's grand daddy?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I can't read the article due to Slashdot effect, but if shuttle launches are contributing to or causing (big difference there!) the formation of the noctilucent clouds then there should be a correlation to check for. Specifically, there should be a fall in the number of observed clouds during the two extended periods of time when the shuttle wasn't flying following the Challenger and Columbia disasters. IIRC, there was a similar fall off in percentage cloud cover over the US during the days after 9/11 when almost no aircraft were flying within US airspace.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Wow, that was the easiest way to get rid of these pesky modpoints ever. Go back to the old article and retroactively mod everyone up who vaguely mentioned something spaceshuttly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ahah! So, "From the Earth to the Moon" was a documentary, and not fictional (so, it's the opposite of the moon landing shots).
Now you've done it! You'll soon be receiving a visit from some extraordinary gentlemen.
I've seen this, they are one of the most beautiful things ever to reach my eye. Was around 1998 in california after a space shuttle launch, it looked like we had Northern Lights all of a sudden, huge swathes of purple and green whisks of clouds all across the night sky, visible right during a typical beautiful california sunset. Man... good times.
So 300 pounds is within that range, and your point is?
*tons
Had you RTFA you would have seen this:
Scientists at the time suggested that the night-shining clouds over London were made of meteoritic dust. But those aerosols are typically too small to reflect sunlight efficiently, Kelley argues, suggesting the clouds above Europe were made of ice crystals. This assumption, along with the new analysis of shuttle plume movement, strongly suggests that the object that blazed into the atmosphere and disintegrated above Siberia was a moisture-rich comet rather than a relatively dry asteroid.
And what happened around that time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa
You totally miss the point of the story. Its not the fuel mixture. Its the fact that large amounts of water vapor find their way to the upper atmosphere. Some by natural causes. Some by shuttle launches.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
From June, 2003: .... note the last sentence.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030615.html
6 years.
Sometimes it takes main stream media a while to catch on.
Note that this APOD entry has further links to US Navy research on the topic.
The previous article also noted it could have been due to Krakatoa Island sending house sized bits of itself into low earth orbit four years earlier.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's a non-sequitur. There may be multiple anthropogenic causes for noctilucent clouds, some of which could have existed in 1887. Industrial revolution, etc.
Noctilucent clouds occur over a very small altitude range (about 82-84 km) Observations of the same cloud from different locations can be used to find the height by triangulation. ISTR that the 1887 observation did this and that it is therefore a genuine observation of NLC.
The question of whether there were no NLC before this date was a contentious one last time I asked. Some make the argument that NLC are very distinctive and that if they were there we would have records going back to the Viking era, as we do with the Aurora Borealis. Others, however, argue that NLC look sufficiently like other clouds and are sufficiently unremarkable to the casual observer that it is not surprising that there are no descriptions prior to 1887. (Remember that the idea that it is worth naming and describing clouds only really goes back to Luke Howard in the early 1800s.)
Also recorded in history is this account of a close encounter of the third kind in 1887 ;-))
http://home.pacbell.net/joerit/docs2/crash/1887crsh.htm
0x or or snor perron?!
are obvious Chemtrails.
This is /., very few actually RTFA.
CM and CI carbonaceous chondrites are the ones I was thinking about specifically, they aren't that "dry" compared to other asteroids.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Such nonsense. Recently noctilucent clouds have been observed with uncommon frequency all over the world, not just the US: http://www.nlcnet.co.uk/
These idiotic explanations (global warming, space shuttle) show that a political agenda is being protected. It is quite simple: noctilucent clouds are a symptom of cooling of the upper atmosphere. Only that allows ice crystals to survive at a height of 80 kilometers at such low latitudes.
This true explanation cannot be allowed to penetrate the public mind because it constitutes evidence that conflicts with the attempt to sell the global warming scam and impose a carbon tax. Hence the bullshit.
poor quality american electronics. if the entire system was built by the Russians we wouldn't even have a single issue... the advantage of the russian system is that it isn't man-controlled, if 1 single blip comes up on their computer the entire shuttle is turned-off it can't take off (like the hacked around nasa ones). it was funny when on the discovery channel the Russian ISS engineers said: we always have to rewire all the american made ISS parts because everything is done in inches (the only country in the world to do anything in inches). just face it NASA: a bankrupt state can supply better products, than one which pretends to be the richest...
More wishful thinking that man's slightest activity can cause changes on a global scale. The numbers don't add up. Sure, that's a lot of tons of water vapor sent up a couple of times a year, but compared to the volume of the hemisphere's atmosphere, it's virtually nothing. Add to that the osmotic pressures that cause dilution, supersonic currents that dissipate the vapor, and the movement of the ship itself which leaves just a slender tendril through the air. Now we are expected to believe that this water vapor hangs together and goes off to Antarctica and Alaska to form distinctive clouds?
"In our recent discussion of the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds..." ... we had plenty of input on the history and nature of them, including an uncharacteristically (for recent examples) detailed and accurate recounting from Wired.
So how is it one can reference an article with such good, clear information, and then utterly ignore all of that in order to posit such a ridiculous assertion? Worse than submission of such junk articles is the complete lack of editorial effort in determining whether the submission is worth posting.
As to whether these predate the observed appearance following the Krakatoa eruption, it might be useful to inquire of those who'd be likely to have historical sightings -- arctic or near arctic natives such as Yup'ik, Saami or Tungusk.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
That was the comet that broke the mountain's back. It had a lasting effect on the gender known as "cowboys".
So they illuminate our nights and warm up the poles? Sounds great. I want more of those. Never mind the islanders, they should have started building floating cities and submarine bubbles years ago.
I've seen these for years, while living in Omaha and Fargo. They are pretty.
For all the "Save the Earth" people, the Earth's climate is self regulating. Any swings of high or low temperatures, alter weather to bring it back towards normal. Why are we worrying so much about this?
Ice ages happen. Hot ages happen. I'm doubtful there is anything we can do to prevent this.
... which is the layer of the atmosphere, 50km-85km, immediately above the statosphere. This is a very lonely place, the air's too thin to float baloons, airplanes and such, and too thick for orbiting spacecraft. Its major inhabitants are falling meteors and rocket ships enroute to outer spaces. Also hosts the D Layer of the ionosphere (during daylight hours) which tends to absorb radio waves transmitted from the ground.
:-)
Convection stops in the stratosphere (because there is no temperature inversion there) so very difficult for gases and vapors rising from the ground to reach this desolate place.
> My theory, then, is that they were caused by the advent of
> photography, in much the same way Color was invented in the 50s.
You're off by a couple of decades. The world turned color starting in the thirties. Although, it was pretty grainy color for a while.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Here's what I find interesting: the bulk of the 'data' behind anthropogenic global warming points to a rise in temps THIS century of a small handful of degrees. The concern is over the consequences of a further rise of, again, a small handful of degrees.
Now, drag out all the charts, graphs, and politically-motivated reports you want, for and against; the only actual modern large-scale experiment that gives us any proof regarding human impact on temperature was the week after 9/11.
The complete lack of aircraft over the US had a SIGNIFICANT effect on high and low temperatures immediately.
Couple that with this current evidence that a single shuttle launch can apparently impact cloud formation over the Antarctic, and I'd say that's a far-more-tangible red flag than the supposed connections made over CO2 or other 'global warming' gases.
So why isn't there a significant, sustained effort to minimize air travel?
-Styopa
Thank you, Calvin's dad.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Schroedinger's Noctilucent Cloud?
It doesn't exist until you photograph it?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Dude, UFOs.
So the volume of shuttle exhaust material is enough to fill a significant portion of the upper atmosphere of the North Pole?
Really depends on how much you spread it out. If the air up there was only 1/1000 thick as it is a sea level, then, a volume of gas which might be a cubic 100 meters at sea level would be considerably larger in the upper atmosphere... miles across maybe.
This is my sig.
I remember growing up in New York when the Space Shuttle launched it always rained the next day.
The claim is not that shuttle launches are the cause for all noctilucent clouds, but rather the recent dramatic increase in sightings of this previously rare phenomenon.
In the science field, there's a saying "anecdotes are not data."
Let's see some real statistics.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
what a strange page to link to for your historical information, furthermore, that page says nothing about sending bits into orbit
Hah! That was a GGGGGREAT Calvin and Hobbes!!! http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/calvin-father-on-black-and-white-pictures.gif
Interesting PBS NOVA show on Global Dimming or the effects of a hundred thousand US jet flights a day. they mostly halted the three days after 9-11. The upper atmosphere become noticeably more clear in that short period.
because there was so much more evidence that this was caused by global warming
man-made global warming itself is just as much correlationisevidence
You idiot! RTFA!
So is that evidence of alien visitation?
More Caffeine. NOW
Yeah, sorta' like boobs.
I drank what? -- Socrates
1 Metric tonne of water is 1 cubic metre. It doesnt sound like much to me either In comparison, an olympic size swimming pool has 2m x 25m x 50m = 2500 metric tonnes of water.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
It's completely natural. Space launches are a natural product of evolution.
Or, to put it another way: if God didn't want us to go into space, he wouldn't have made it so easy to react hydrogen with oxygen.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Seven digit'r up there. 'Course they expect folks to RTFA.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I was simply amazed to see this cloud formation until I read about the rocket launch at Vandenberg earlier that evening http://www.flickr.com/photos/peaqoud/2152740519/in/set-72157601528841883/
...or actually secret is NASA activities cause ozone holes...or...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"