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Space Traffic May Be Creating More Clouds
seagirlreed writes "Rocket traffic may be adding water to the Earth's mesosphere, leading to more very high clouds in this layer of thin air on the edge of space. From the article: 'A team of researchers looking for an expected decrease in the number of clouds in this layer, as solar activity and heating have ramped up, were instead surprised to find an increase in the number and brightness of clouds in this near-outer-space region over the last two years. ... The source of the water to make the clouds is a puzzle, Siskind explained, because there is not much sign of it coming up into the mesosphere. On the other hand, rockets and, until recently, shuttles roaming in space could rain water exhaust down into the mesosphere.'"
When we colonize the mesosphere in Bespin-style cloud cities, we'll need clouds there.
with 1 stone... put lots of rockets up and build something cool like a Elysium space city, or maybe a space elevator. And solve global warming at the same time!
to confuse the C02 argument even further.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Probably worth noting that this refers to noctilucent clouds (NLCs) which occur in polar regions.
The findings of NASA's AIM satellite are, as of yet, inexplicable. Therefore, what's mentioned here is purely speculative.
If we would lose the ozon layer would creating more of these clouds be a possible solution? TM by the way.
... But we do know it was us that scorched the sky...
Just how big a cloud can 10^6 kg* of water make?
*Chosen for topicality.
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Funny thing about clouds... they increase reflectivity. As the temperatures go up more water vapour goes up into the sky to form clouds, which reflect incoming light and heat and provide a cooling effect. i.e.: it's self-regulating.
Are you saying /doters are posting speculative assumptions to explain inconclusive observations.
Them is fightin words, sir! Pistols at sunrise.
Every time they come across something that doesn't match their understanding of something, the lazy scientist automatically suggests that Humans must be fucking up their careful calculations. Because, they know everything Nature has to throw at them so it must b the stupid Humans.
Since there hasn't been a significant increase in rocket launches in the last two years, rocket launches can't be the explanation for an increase in noctilucent clouds in the last two years.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Funny thing about clouds... they increase reflectivity. As the temperatures go up more water vapour goes up into the sky to form clouds, which reflect incoming light and heat and provide a cooling effect. i.e.: it's self-regulating.
They reflect incoming light. and outgoing heat.
To first order, in fact, clouds don't have a significant effect on average temperature (if they reflect incident light and exiting infrared equally well, the effects cancel). They do have a big effect on the day/night temperature variation (cloud-free days have high daytime temperatures and low nighttime temperature.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
FWIW, there is some indication that Noctilucent clouds in the mesosphere have been only been around since the industrial revolution times (since there aren't really any earlier descriptions of the phenomena in recorded history unlike other atmospheric anomolies like auroras or sundogs), so it's a bit presumputous that the effect has been greatly effected by space traffic vs some other human terrestrial source. It is also suspected that since this phenomena appears to also track the solar cycle, the most recent solar cycle (24) got off to a late start (by a couple of years), and they also noted this phenomena was a bit higher than normal the last couple of years and they don't really know much about this phenomena, so it's hard to get too excited about this yet...
On the other hand, there is much more airplane traffic vs space traffic and airplane contrails apparently have a much larger effect.
Funny thing about clouds... they increase reflectivity. As the temperatures go up more water vapour goes up into the sky to form clouds, which reflect incoming light and heat and provide a cooling effect. i.e.: it's self-regulating.
This is Richard Linzen's "Iris" hypothesis. One of the few plausible bits of actual science from the so-called climate skeptics. Unfortunately, it seems not to work and was thoroughly refuted about ten years ago.
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Tats why Venus is so cool.
Well if it was refuted by the whackaloons at skepticalScience, then it's obviously true.
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It was refuted by, among others, his own department, including his own doctoral students using his own and then later results. Actually refute is too strong a word because the effect was more precisely quantified and found to be far smaller than expected. Heat is reflected just not as much as was initially suggested.
Richard Linzen's "Iris" hypothesis has be weighed by Science and found wanting. Nothing in Science prevents scientists from researching the Iris idea further but the vast majority won't because they have already debunked it to their own satisfaction and found something more interesting.
In less kind words Linzen's book is like the popular "Chariots of gods" from the 70's in that it attempts to baffle lay-people with speculative bullshit that just "sounds right".
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Quite apart from all this wonderful science being thrown around, which is quite beyond poor old me, would there even be enough waste water being left by the rockets to account for these vasty high clouds? They're very small things, comparatively. And as slew mentions, if it were airplane contrails, there's a lot more air traffic than surface-to-space.
OK, a rocket is big and loud and FAST....
That is why I am calling shenanigans on this.
It punches through 100,000 feet in a minute expending the last 14 minutes of exhaust up above the real atmosphere before it hits orbit.
My mother used to complain that every time a rocket or shuttle launch was reported on TV, the weather would deteriorate over the next few weeks, Every time it rained, "Its those damn rockets!!!".
Seems she might have had a point all along.....
Its something she would havel enjoyed knowing.
*sigh*
They obviously meant all altitudes "normal" clouds appear. Mesosphere is way higher than were normal clouds ever form (the atmosphere) and water (vapour) never gets there by normal weather or climatic influences that we know of. The whole idea is that they have water there they can't explain properly. Their hypothesis is that it's coming from exhaust of rocket engines, but they aren't sure. There is no indication this has anything to do with the prediction that there will be increased cloud cover in the atmosphere due to increased temperatures on the surface of the planet.
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"Rocket traffic". The first time ever I saw these two words written together as a new, compound expression for a new concept. The XXIst century has very well begun :-))
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All the broken clouds I see today must be the result of a broken rocket. Obviously the malfunctioning rocket in Russia recently has a widespread environmental effect.
Others have pointed out that it doesn't actually work that way, but not why.
Clouds are made out of water, water absorbs UV (rather than reflecting it) and radiates IR. But it radiates it in all directions. It takes about two feet of liquid water to absorb all of the UV, which is why you can still get a sunburn on a cloudy day. UV is still coming through, and now (due to the influence of the clouds) it's coming in at all angles. UV coming in at an angle has less chance to be reflected into space, and more chance to hit the ground. Meanwhile, much of the IR radiated by the clouds will strike the planet. So in fact, the amount of energy reflected by the clouds is not nearly as much as you might think. And much of what is reflected is reflected not by the top layer of clouds, but by a subsequent layer. Some of that will simply be reflected down again. In the process it's also lending heat energy to the atmosphere, which will be released over time; some of it outwards into space, and some of it downwards into Earth.
TL;DR clouds are not made of mylar, HTH
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