Mysterious Glowing Clouds

[BURNING MAN]

Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies

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.

LINK

[kidflash2008]

Thank you for sharing the article. I couldn't help but notice phrases such as "man-made global warming". I would contest that idea as global warming has been the trend for the past few thousand years. I would not state it is all man made, as the scientists still do not know what our contribution to it is.

[$$kneel-B4-me$$]

you know i have seen these clouds on two occassions and they really are amazing. I lived all over the east coast to the midwest of the U.S. and have never seen them before in my life. i have lived in FL now for 8 yrs and have never seen them here til the last spring around 10:30p.m. i was going to go workout and i noticed it was really bright outside i thought at first they changed the street lights but when i looked up i saw the clouds were a really bright pinkish orange, a couple weeks later the same thing. I havn't seen them since, but i must say it was awe-inspiring