Latest Cirrus cloud Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online At any given time, nearly one-third of the planet is covered by cirrus clouds – the thin wisps of vapor that trail across the sky – which coalesce in the upper layers of the troposphere, as much as 10 miles or higher above the surface of the Earth. Cirrus clouds cool the planet by reflecting incoming solar radiation, and warm it by trapping outgoing heat. In this way, they influence global climate, so understanding the...
RedOrbit.com Meteorologist Joshua Kelly Have you ever looked up in the sky and wondered what all those different types of clouds actually are? Well to be exact there is a cloud for every type of weather event. When high pressure is to the east of a viewing place, the most common types of clouds to find are the Cumulus family of clouds. There are several types of cumulus clouds ranging from Cumulus – which have the appearance of small marshmallows – to the middle sized vertical...
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips - Science @ NASANASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), best known for cutting-edge images of the sun, has made a discovery right here on Earth. "It's a new form of ice halo," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley of England. "We saw it for the first time at the launch of SDO--and it is teaching us new things about how shock waves interact with clouds."Ice halos are rings and arcs of light that appear in the sky when sunlight shines through...
Clouds play a major role in the climate-change equation, but they are the least-understood variable in the sky, observes a Texas A&M University geoscientist, who says mid-level clouds are especially understudied. The professor, Shaima Nasiri, is making those "in-between" clouds the focus of her research, which is being funded by NASA.Mid-level clouds are so understudied, Nasiri says, that scientists have yet to develop a common nomenclature for them. "We do not have a...
By Michael Finneran, NASA Langley Research CenterWhen Patrick Minnis saw video of the "mystery" contrail Nov. 9 that looked like a missile launch near Catalina Island off Los Angeles, he figured it the way most people did."I assumed it was a missile," said Minnis, a contrail expert in the Science Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.Then he got a call from an Associated Press reporter and told her, yes, it sure looks like a missile."She...
Gaze up at a cloud-filled sky, and you may spot the white, fluffy shape of a dragon, fish or elephant. Looking at the same sky, Graeme Stephens sees a different vision -- a possible future for Earth's climate.Stephens, a professor at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, is principal investigator of NASA's CloudSat mission, launched in 2006 to improve our understanding of the role clouds play in our complicated climate system. Stephens says that as Earth's global temperature continues to...
New technology to help with climate change predictionsScientists have created an instrument designed to help determine the shapes and sizes of tiny ice crystals typical of those found in high-altitude clouds, down to the micron level (comparable to the tiniest cells in the human body), according to a new study in Optics Letters, a journal published by the Optical Society. The data produced using this instrument likely will help improve computer models used to predict climate change.Among the...
From the deserts of the American southwest to the pine forests of the Deep South, drought-weary residents have one thing on their minds: "I wish it would rain!"Technically, what they should be wishing for is "more streamflow," says Dr. Ashutosh Limaye, a hydrologist at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama. Streamflow is a term used by water management specialists to mean, very simply, the amount of water in streams and rivers....
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!You cataracts and hurricanes, spout...Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! (King Lear, Act III, Scene 2)NASA -- Shakespeare's King Lear shouted to the heavens for a thunderstorm to vent its fury on him. A team of NASA scientists is hoping for precisely the same thing. They'd like a few really furious thunderstorms to come their way -- but not for Lear's dark purposes."We have a lot to learn about thunderstorms, and we'd like to...
CANBERRA -- Scientists from 10 countries will release 1,000 weather balloons in Australia's northern city of Darwin over the next month as part an international experiment to try to find out the nature of tropical clouds.The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment involves scientists from Australia, Europe, the United States and Japan and aims to find out how the high-altitude cirrus clouds are formed and break up."Cirrus are ubiquitous in the tropics and have a large impact on...
Latest Cirrus cloud Reference Libraries
The above map looks at what is known as ceilings. The definition of ceilings is the first broken or overcast layer of cloud cover in the atmosphere. For it to be considered a ceiling the clouds need to cover more than half of the sky. If we look at the red circled area we see the numbers of 1 and 2. This tells us that there is a ceiling at 1,000-2,000ft which are in the level of low clouds such as cumulus or stratus. The second is the black circle found in the Dakota’s. Here we are...
If you look in the photo above you can see the line of Cumulus clouds that appear in the background. These clouds were created by daytime heating and also an unstable atmosphere. The moisture for these clouds was rising from the Pacific Ocean. The darker cloud is the stronger of the cumulus clouds meaning that the majority of the moisture is being absorbed by that cloud. The clouds around this one are also starting to get more moisture from the ocean to build. Above the cumulus clouds you...
Cirrus clouds are thin wisplike strands, sometimes accompanied by patches. Their shape and arrangement lead to their common name of "mare's tail". These clouds can be so extensive that they are virtually identical to one another and hard to tell apart. Sometimes high altitude convection produces another form of cirrus called cirrocumulus. Many cirrus clouds produce hair-like filaments made of heavy ice crystals that precipitate from them. This precipitation often indicates the difference in...
Cirrocumulus clouds are high-altitude clouds that mainly occur between 16,000 and 40,000 feet. Like most cumulus clouds, these clouds indicate a vertical and upward transference of atmospheric conditions. Unlike other cirrus clouds, cirrocumulus composition includes super-cooled liquid water droplets. Ice crystals are also present, and usually, the ice crystals cause the droplets in the cloud to freeze rapidly, transforming the cirrocumulus into cirrostratus. This process can also produce ice...
