{"id":1187,"date":"2020-07-22T14:03:14","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T14:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurorasaurudev.wpengine.com\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2023-12-26T21:48:26","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T21:48:26","slug":"another-lively-season-of-night-shining-clouds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.aurorasaurus.org\/?p=1187","title":{"rendered":"Another Lively Season of Night-Shining Clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Kasha Patel<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Reposted from\u00a0NASA Earth Observatory<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"June<\/a>
June 23, 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every summer in the Northern Hemisphere, electric blue streaks form high in the atmosphere. These seasonal clouds typically lurk about 80 kilometers (50 miles) overhead in\u00a0the mesosphere<\/a>\u00a0around the Arctic, but every once in a while they form at lower latitudes.\u00a0In 2019<\/a>, the clouds showed up in places where they were only rarely seen in the previous decade, including California, Colorado, and France. This year, the clouds are equally impressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2018s another incredible year,\u201d said\u00a0Lynn Harvey<\/a>, an atmospheric scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. \u201cWhen noctilucent clouds extend to mid-latitudes\u2014where people live and notice them on a daily basis\u2014we consider that a noteworthy season.\u201d This year\u2019s clouds have been seen\u00a0as far south<\/a>\u00a0as Joshua Tree, California.<\/p>\n

Noctilucent clouds form when water vapor aggregates and freezes around specks of meteor dust floating in the mesosphere. These thin, wavy ice clouds reflect sunlight and usually shine bright blue and white. Known as \u201cnight-shining\u201d clouds, they typically appear around dusk or dawn when the Sun is below the horizon at an angle that lights the clouds from below.<\/p>\n

The image above shows a satellite view of noctilucent clouds on June 23, 2020. The image is centered on the North Pole and is stitched together from data acquired in several orbital passes by NASA\u2019s\u00a0Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere<\/a>\u00a0(AIM) spacecraft. AIM\u2019s\u00a0Cloud Imaging and Particle Size<\/a>\u00a0(CIPS) instrument measures albedo, or the amount of light reflected back to space by the high-altitude clouds. The clouds appear in various shades of light blue to white, depending on the properties of the ice particles.<\/p>\n