[Tangalor]

Possibly file this under news of the weird!

Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies | Wired Science | Wired.com

Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.

Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.

The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.

“That’s a real concern and question,” said James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University and the principal investigator of an ongoing NASA satellite mission to study the clouds. “Why are they getting more numerous? Why are they getting brighter? Why are they appearing at lower latitudes?”

Nobody knows for sure, but most of the answers seem to point to human-caused global atmospheric change.


Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885 by an amateur astronomer. No observations of anything resembling noctilucent clouds before that time has ever been found. There is no lack of observations of other phenomena in the sky, so atmospheric scientists are fairly sure that the phenomenon is recent, although they are not sure why.

Over the last 125 years, scientists have learned how the clouds form. At temperatures around minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit, dust blowing up from below or falling into the atmosphere from space provides a resting spot for water vapor to condense and freeze. Right now, during the northern hemisphere’s summer, the atmosphere is heating up and expanding. At the outside edge of the atmosphere, that actually means that it’s getting colder because it’s pushed farther out into space.

It’s not hard to see how a warming Earth could change those dynamics: as the globe heats up, the top of the atmosphere should get colder.

“The prevailing theory and most plausible explanation is that CO2 buildup, at 50 miles above the surface, would cause the temperature decrease,” Russell said. He cautioned, however, that temperature observations remain inconclusive.

The global changes that appear to be reshaping noctilucent cloud distribution could be much more complex, said Vincent Wickwar, an atmospheric scientist at Utah State University whose team was first to report a mid-latitude noctilucent cloud in 2002. Temperature does not explain their observations from around 42 degrees latitude.

“To get the noctilucent clouds you need temperatures that are about 20 degrees Kelvin colder than what we see on average up there,” Wickwar said. “We may have effects from CO2 or methane but it would only be a degree or a fraction of a degree.”

Instead, Wickwar’s explanation is that a vertical atmospheric wave discovered in their LIDAR data lowered the temperature in the region above their radar installation near Logan, Utah. But then you have to ask, he noted, “Where’d the wave come from?”

They don’t really have an answer yet. Other facilities around the world with similar LIDAR capacity haven’t reported similar waves. And the Rocky Mountains, near Wickwar’s lab, can cause atmospheric waves, which could be a special feature of his location.


Other theories abound to explain the observed changes in the clouds. Human-caused increases in atmospheric methane, which oxidizes into carbon dioxide and water vapor, could be providing more water for ice in the stratosphere. Increases in the amount of cosmic or terrestrial dust in the stratosphere could also increase the number of brightly shining clouds.

Two years into Russell’s NASA project, more questions exist than firm answers. They will have at least three and a half more years, though, to gather good data on upper atmospheric dynamics.

The recent observations of noctilucent clouds at all kinds of latitudes provide an extra impetus to understand what is going on up there. Changes are occurring faster than scientists can understand their causes.

“I suspect, as many of us feel, that it is global change, but I fear we don’t understand it,” Wickwar said. “It’s not as simple as a temperature change.”

more pictures here: Clouds light up the sky-- wait, clouds? | KOMO News - Seattle, Washington | Weather Blog

[scorch]

Yes noctilucent clouds are very interesting.

[LaRemnant]

It's the END of the WORRRLD and we're ALLLL going to DIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!! ...

Seriously though, it does kind of freak me out. Some "supposed" seers also portend something like 600 mile winds and super duper storms the likes that have never been seen in recorded history... supposedly.

[Tangalor]

Originally Posted by LaRemnant

It's the END of the WORRRLD and we're ALLLL going to DIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!! ...

Seriously though, it does kind of freak me out. Some "supposed" seers also portend something like 600 mile winds and super duper storms the likes that have never been seen in recorded history... supposedly.

Yup, there goes the neighborhood :P

[BlueDude13]

At least the End is in color instead of black and white.

[garret]

you get dog clouds (as they are called where i come from) occasionally maybe seen 1 every 5 years or so, they look spectacular but not exactly a portent of anything realy

[Celticwarrior]

At least it isn't Auroras. We start getting those all over the place, that's when you actually should start to panic. It means the magnetic field generated by the core is breaking up. That would be very very bad. Although MOST of the planet would still be covered, the funnel effect of energized particles from cosmic rays and solar winds would focus those at a more populated area rather than barren polar regions. Also, there could, for a time, be MULTIPLE poles, as the core shifts and creates magnetic islands all over the planet, until things settle down to a traditional dipole.

Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field

[tjwilhelm]

Great article, CW!!!

Holy cow...this would make a compass totally useless!

"Sometimes the field completely flips. The north and the south poles swap places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows...Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not vanish. "It just gets more complicated," says Glatzmaier. Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places."

[Tangalor]

Originally Posted by tjwilhelm

Great article, CW!!!

Holy cow...this would make a compass totally useless!

"Sometimes the field completely flips. The north and the south poles swap places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows...Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not vanish. "It just gets more complicated," says Glatzmaier. Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places."

I'm glad you took notice! They've had programs on the discovery channel about this, for the past year or so, and anyone and everyone I talk to has no idea about it. I think several things factor into this...

The South Atlantic Anomaly (or SAA) is the region where Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet's surface. For a given altitude, the radiation intensity is greater within this region than elsewhere. The Van Allen radiation belts are symmetric with the Earth's magnetic axis, which is tilted with respect to the Earth's rotational axis by an angle of ~11 degrees. Because of this tilt, the inner Van Allen belt is closest to the Earth's surface over the south Atlantic ocean, and farthest from the Earth's surface over the north Pacific ocean.

The South Atlantic Anomaly is of great significance to astronomical satellites and other spacecraft that orbit the Earth at several hundred kilometers altitude; these orbits take satellites through the anomaly periodically, exposing them to several minutes of strong radiation each time. The International Space Station, orbiting with an inclination of 51.6°, requires extra shielding to deal with this problem. The Hubble Space Telescope does not take observations while passing through the SAA.