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Posts Tagged ‘clouds’

ENASA satellite finds Earth’s clouds are getting lower

February 22, 2012 Comments off

physorg.com

(PhysOrg.com) — Earth’s clouds got a little lower — about one percent on average — during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

ENASA satellite finds Earth's clouds are getting lowerThis image of clouds over the southern Indian Ocean was acquired on July 23, 2007 by one of the backward (northward)-viewing cameras of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s polar-orbiting Terra spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s . The study, published recently in the journal , revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to Read more…

Categories: Earth, Earth changes Tags: , , ,

Mysterious Night-Shining Clouds Getting Brighter

January 29, 2011 Comments off
Night-shining clouds, or noctilucent clouds, photo from Denmark
After the sun sets on a summer evening and the sky fades to black, you may be lucky enough to see thin, wavy clouds illuminating the night, such as these seen over Billund, Denmark, on July 15, 2010.
Jan Erik Paulsen/ NASA Earth Observatory. 

Clouds bright enough to see at night are not as hard to find as they once were.

These so-called night-shining clouds are still rare — rare enough that Matthew DeLand, who has been studying them for 11 years, has seen them only once. But his odds are increasing. [Related: In Images: Reading the Clouds.]

These mysterious clouds form between 50 and 53 miles (80 and 85 kilometers) up in the atmosphere, altitudes so high that they reflect light long after the sun has dropped below the horizon.

DeLand, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has found that night-shining clouds — technically known as polar mesospheric or noctilucent clouds — are forming more frequently and becoming brighter. He has been observing the clouds in data from instruments that have been flown on satellites since 1978.

For reasons not fully understood, the clouds’ Read more…

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