What is happening
Altitude clouds have been forming in recent days with the highest rates since 2007.
Why it matters
Rocket escape may be the cause, but climate change is also known to make clouds more visible.
Noctilucent clouds are the rarest and highest type of cloud on Earth, and scientists have recently been recording more than at any time in the last 15 years.
They may look a bit like an impressionist wave painting in the ocean, but using the evening sky as canvas and real clouds as painting. Noctilucent clouds form at sky level during the summer months when water molecules freeze around dust backpacks into the atmosphere, creating ethereal and artistic landscapes high above the earth that tend to undulate. se and undulate as if reflecting a restless sea somewhere.
Most noctilucent clouds (the name literally means “bright night”) form in the mesosphere, about 31 to 53 miles (50 to 85 km) above us, where it can be assumed that there is probably very little dust. floating around for water vapor to condense and freeze. around. Most of the material that causes these clouds comes from the smoke from meteors that burn as they pass through the upper atmosphere.
Easily one of the most vivid noctilucent cloud samples we’ve seen in years here at NWS Seattle. There really is nothing like them. We managed to capture the Pleiades and Noctilucent star cluster in one of the following photos.
What a way to start July! #wawx pic.twitter.com/oarVsuPU9q
– NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) July 1, 2022
But something else may also be facilitating the recent dramatic rise of these clouds.
NASA has a spacecraft called AIM (for “ice aeronomy in the mesosphere”) that is helping to study all the fascinating things that happen on the upper deck of our skies.
Cora Randall, a scientist and professor who works at the University of Colorado, Boulder, works with AIM data and was one of the first to verify that NLCs are very high.
“In the last few days we’ve seen a big peak in the clouds,” he told Spaceweather.com last week.
In late June there was an increase in the frequency of noctilucent clouds far exceeding previous peaks, until 2007. One possible cause is the significant increase in rocket launches, led by SpaceX and others.
“We are speculating that the peak could be due to additional water vapor transported to higher latitudes from rocket launches,” Randall adds.
According to astronomer Tony Phillips, who writes on Spaceweather.com, it would take about 10 days for the water vapor released by many rocket engines as exhaust gas to float into the mesophore. This means that Randall’s late June NLC reports could be related to a SpaceX launch on June 19 that also made a show at lower altitudes just after the explosion.
Randall warns that much more analysis needs to be done to confirm whether SpaceX really plays a role in creating rarer clouds.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This animation shows the vision of NASA’s AIM spacecraft for the start of the 2020 night-night cloud season in the Arctic.
NASA / HU / VT / CU-LASP / AIM / Joy Ng
Research has also shown that noctilucent clouds are sensitive to climate change and their increased visibility can also be a byproduct of global warming.
Your best chance to spot them yourself is when conditions are clear, dry and summery. In the northern hemisphere, July is the peak season of NLC. Get out about 30 minutes after sunset and look west to find those ethereal brushstrokes of ice in the sky. The higher the latitude, the more likely you are to see something and make these clouds last longer at night.
If you have great photos, share them with me on Twitter @EricCMack.