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Scientists Considered Pouring Soot Over the Arctic in the 1970s to Help Melt the Ice – In Order to Prevent An Ice Age

by qbit on Dec.18, 2009, under In the News

By George Washington (about the author)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: George Washington – Writer

Preface: I have been an environmentalist my whole life. I have an extensive resume working in the environmental field: I campaigned for preservation of wilderness, for a reduction in urban pollution, for taking pesticide residues out of foods, etc. Indeed, I have previously campaigned against global warming.

I studied environmental science at a top university in the early 1980’s. I was taught – as Al Gore was taught in college – that temperatures are directly correlated with CO2 levels. For 2 decades (until very recently), I believed that anyone questioning any aspect of global warming was paid by big oil or big coal, or influenced by someone who was.

One of the main reasons for writing this essay is to point out that we must make sure that our “solutions” are not more dangerous than the problems themselves. For example, the Washington Post noted that the government forced a switch from one type of chemical to another because it was believed the first was enlarging the ozone hole. However, according to the Post, the chemical which the government demanded be used instead is 4,470 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Currently, “government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of ‘global warming.’” Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being proposed.

And
Noam Chomsky has said that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:

Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.

Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.” (page 388).

Are those ideas any better than pouring soot on the North Pole?

Our primary responsibility must be to ensure that we are not doing more harm than good.

On April 28, 1975, Newsweek wrote an article stating:

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Here is a reprint of the article in the Washington Times, and here is a copy of the 1975 Newsweek article.

Why were scientists considering melting the arctic ice cap?

Because they were worried about a new ice age.

Newsweek discussed the 1975 article in 2006:

In April, 1975 … NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing “ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,” the magazine warned of an impending “drastic decline in food production.” Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect “just about every nation on earth.” Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you’d have known that the threat was: global cooling…

Citizens can judge for themselves what constitutes a prudent response-which, indeed, is what occurred 30 years ago. All in all, it’s probably just as well that society elected not to follow one of the possible solutions mentioned in the NEWSWEEK article: to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap, to help it melt.

Newsweek was not alone. Some scientists and the press have been warning about an ice age off and on for over 100 years.

For example, on February 24, 1895, the New York Times published an article entitled “PROSPECTS OF ANOTHER GLACIAL PERIOD; Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again”, which starts with the following paragraph:

The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.

In September 1958, Harper’s wrote an article called “The Coming Ice Age”.

On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post wrote an article entitled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age – Scientists See Ice Age In the Future” which stated:

Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters–the worst may be yet to come. That’s the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by “climatologists.” the people who study very long-term world weather trends.

In 1972, two scientists – George J. Kukla (of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) and R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown University) – wrote the following letter to President Nixon warning of the possibility of a new ice age:

Dear Mr. President:

Aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended by 42 top American and European investigators. We enclose the summary report published in Science and further publications are forthcoming in Quaternary Research.

The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.

The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.

Existing data still do not allow forecast of the precise timing of the predicted development, nor the assessment of the man’s interference with the natural trends. It could not be excluded however that the cooling now under way in the Northern Hemisphere is the start of the expected shift. The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at the present pace.

The practical consequences which might be brought by such developments to existing social institution are among others:

(1) Substantially lowered food production due to the shorter growing seasons and changed rain distribution in the main grain producing belts of the world, with Eastern Europe and Central Asia to be first affected.

(2) Increased frequency and amplitude of extreme weather anomalies such as those bringing floods, snowstorms, killing frosts, etc.

With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research “

With best regards,

George J. Kukla (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory)

R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown U)

The White House assigned the task of looking at the claims contained in the letter to its science agencies, especially the National Science Foundation and NOAA, who engaged in a flurry of activity looking into the threat of an ice age.

On August 1, 1974 the White House wrote a letter to Secretary of Commerce Frederick Dent stating:

Changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unanticipated impacts on key national programs and policies. Concern has been expressed that recent changes may presage others. In order to assess the problem and to determine what concerted action ought to be undertaken, I have decided to establish a subcommittee on Climate Change.

Out of this concern, the U.S. government started monitoring climate.

As NOAA scientists Robert W. Reeves, Daphne Gemmill, Robert E. Livezey, and James Laver point out:

There were also a number of short-term climate events of national and international consequence in the early 1970s that commanded a certain level of attention in Washington. Many of them were linked to the El Niño of 1972-1973.
A killing winter freeze followed by a severe summer heat wave and drought produced a 12 percent shortfall in Russian grain production in 1972. The Soviet decision to offset the losses by purchase abroad reduced world grain reserves and helped drive up food prices.

Collapse of the Peruvian anchovy harvest in late 1972 and early 1973, related to fluctuations in the Pacific ocean currents and atmospheric circulation, impacted world supplies of fertilizer, the soybean market, and prices of all other protein feedstocks.

The anomalously low precipitation in the U.S. Pacific north-west during the winter of 1972-73 depleted reservoir storage by an amount equivalent to more than 7 percent of the electric energy requirements for the region.On June 24, 1974, Time Magazine wrote an article entitled “Another Ice Age?” which stated:

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere …

Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.

(here’s the printer-friendly version).

Science News wrote an article in 1975 called “Chilling Possibilities” warning of a new ice age.

A January 1975 article from the New York Times warned:

The most drastic potential change considered in the new report (by the National Academy of Sciences) is an abrupt end to the present interglacial period of relative warmth that has governed the planet’s climate for the past 10,000 years.

A May 21, 1975 article in the New York Times again stated:

Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable.

A 1994 Time article entitled “The Ice Age Cometh?” stated:

What ever happened to global warming? Scientists have issued apocalyptic warnings for years, claiming that gases from cars, power plants and factories are creating a greenhouse effect that will boost the temperature dangerously over the next 75 years or so. But if last week is any indication of winters to come, it might be more to the point to start worrying about the next Ice Age instead. After all, human-induced warming is still largely theoretical, while ice ages are an established part of the planet’s history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago; the next one — for there will be a next one — could start tens of thousands of years from now. Or tens of years. Or it may have already started.


Note 1: Given that scientists considered pouring soot on the North Pole to melt the ice in the 1970’s, it should come as no surprise that soot may be having a dramatic effect on the ice sheets and glaciers now.

Note 2: Some global warming advocates warn that a warming-induced shut down of the huge ocean current known as the thermohaline circulation could cause a new ice age in certain limited parts of the world that are warmed by the by the North Atlantic current, such as Iceland, Ireland, the Nordic countries, and Britain. But scientists in the 1970s were talking about something different: the start of a worldwide ice age due, for example, to a 100,000 year cycle in solar radiation hitting the Earth.


Note 3: I not only do not receive a penny from oil or any other energy, industry or political person or organization of any nature whatsoever (I make a few peanuts from ads on my site, which I do not choose, but are selected without my input by my ad service), I am also wholly and completely against big oil, big coal and big nuclear. As I have repeatedly argued, power should be taken away from the oil giants and decentralized. I have repeatedly argued for microgeneration and for alternative energy. These things are beneficial for a number of reasons – including better health, less corruption of our political systems through decentralization of power, and a boost to our economy – in addition to whatever climate benefits they may have.

Note 4: For further information on the swing between warnings of ice ages and runaway global warming, see this and this. I have verified all of the facts made in the main post above, but I have not yet verified all of the claims made in the last two aforementioned web pages.

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Caution urged over cloud seeding

by qbit on Sep.23, 2009, under In the News, What are they?

Justine Davies
scidev.net
6 August 2009 | EN

Scientists who have produced the first robust proof that cloud seeding can increase long-term rainfall are urging developing countries considering the technology to be cautious.

Cloud seeding involves injecting clouds with chemicals that encourage water vapour to form ice crystals heavy enough to fall, melting on their way to produce rain. Chemicals can be injected into clouds using aircraft or by launching rockets.

The researchers — led by Steven Siems, an associate professor from Monash University, Australia — examined more than four decades of cloud seeding experiments in Tasmania and found rainfall was at least five per cent higher over seeded areas.

But co-author Anthony Morrison points out that clouds in Tasmania contain vast amounts of supercooled liquid water and are unusually clean — making them particularly suitable for cloud seeding.

And Siems wants more research, saying, ”There could be other explanations for the increased rainfall — although we suspect that cloud seeding is a significant contributor.”

He told SciDev.Net that promoting cloud seeding to developing countries is “probably not a good thing to do”.

“There are many, many unscrupulous people in the field of weather modification who up until now have promoted some methods without any proper scientific evidence. Developing countries are particularly at risk here,” says Siems.

The technique ”remains controversial, especially because in the early days unrealistic claims were made about its success”, says Johannes Verlinde, associate professor of meteorology at US-based Pennsylvania State University.

Another reason for the controversy, he says, is that no two clouds are alike, making it difficult to compare clouds to prove it really works.

Siems cautions that developing countries should carefully consider whether cloud seeding is right for them and avoid other unproven techniques.

Roelof Bruintjes, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, United States, agrees, and says that there are many companies promoting techniques such as ‘ionisation’ — where charged particles in the air are claimed to act as nuclei for rain drops to form — that have not been scientifically proven.

The problem, he says, ”is that people are desperate and in some cases are willing to try anything”.

However, he also says cloud seeding may be an economical way to enhance water resources in some developing countries. Bruintjes’ own organisation is helping Mali monitor cloud seeding experiments.

But he “would advise all governments considering cloud seeding to conduct tests first to see if it is going to work for their country”.

The research was published in the June issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

Link to abstract in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

References

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 48, 1267 (2009)

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Surprise: “Noctilucent clouds” may be human made.

by qbit on Jul.29, 2009, under Optical Phenomena

Comet likely culprit in Tunguska blast
Clouds over London following the event are similar to those formed from today’s shuttle plumes
Web edition : Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Night-shining clouds created after space shuttle launches may offer clues into the cause of the Tunguska event, a mysterious blast which rocked southern Siberia more than a century ago.

Thin clouds have appeared at abnormally high altitudes over polar regions following space shuttle launches on several occasions in the past decade. These noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds typically occur in summer and lie at altitudes of about 85 kilometers, in a layer of the atmosphere called the thermosphere, says Michael C. Kelley, an atmospheric physicist at Cornell University. Kelley and his colleagues suggest in the July 28 Geophysical Research Letters that data gleaned from analyses of these high-flying clouds, as well as knowledge about the speed at which shuttle exhaust wafted to polar regions, now hint that the Tunguska blast of June 1908 (SN: 6/21/08, p. 5) resulted from a comet slamming into Earth’s atmosphere.

Each launch of a space shuttle, which burns a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel, pumps about 300 metric tons of water vapor into the atmosphere at altitudes between 100 and 115 kilometers. Soon after the January 16, 2003, launch of the shuttle Columbia, a liftoff that took place just after the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, noctilucent clouds appeared over Antarctica. Similarly, a widespread display of the night-shining clouds showed up over Alaska two days after the shuttle Endeavour blasted off on August 8, 2007. Previous studies show that in both instances those clouds included material from the shuttle plumes.

“Conventional wisdom says that the plumes shouldn’t reach the poles that quickly, but they do,” Kelley notes. So sustained high-altitude winds must be carrying the plumes to the poles.

Michael S. Stevens, a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., agrees: Experiments show that “winds can be strong at these altitudes, but they’re not well understood.”

Using data based on shuttle plume movement, the researchers suggest that the Tunguska blast could have been responsible for unusually bright noctilucent clouds over Europe soon thereafter. The likely composition of those clouds further suggests that a comet caused the blast.

Some of the thickest and brightest noctilucent clouds ever observed — ones that cast enough light to read a newspaper in the middle of the night — appeared over Europe on July 1, 1908, Kelley says. Not coincidentally, he and his colleagues argue, the Tunguska blast occurred over southern Siberia about 22 hours earlier. The team’s models suggest that winds and diffusion could have transported material from the site of the blast to the skies over London, a distance of about 5,000 kilometers, in little more than a day.

Scientists at the time suggested that the night-shining clouds over London were made of meteoritic dust. But those aerosols are typically too small to reflect sunlight efficiently, Kelley argues, suggesting the clouds above Europe were made of ice crystals. This assumption, along with the new analysis of shuttle plume movement, strongly suggests that the object that blazed into the atmosphere and disintegrated above Siberia was a moisture-rich comet rather than a relatively dry asteroid.

“That’s an interesting idea, and worth considering,” Stevens says. In an alternate scenario, he notes, rather than the moisture being transported to Europe and then coalescing into clouds, the clouds may have formed over Siberia and then been transported to the west.

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Arrogant scientists and Obama administration should recall the story of the old lady who swallowed a fly.

by qbit on Apr.08, 2009, under In the News

Pea-brained, arrogant Obama administration scientists recommend spewing more pollution into the atmosphere to “solve global warming.”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to invest the money in alternative energy production and/or install better scrubbers on all coal/gas smokestacks?  It would be orders of magnitude more efficient to catch the pollution at the source rather than to try to sequester it from the atmosphere once its already been released and dispersed.

Please keep in mind, co2 makes up a fraciton of 1% of our atmosphere

By the way there’s snow on the ground right now outside my office, and its April.

Regardless this new proposed aerosol dispersal is a terrible idea just as the secret aerosol chemtrail program is.

. . .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama looks at “climate engineering”

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”

Holdren outlined several “tipping points” involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of “really intolerable consequences,” he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.”

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.

Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.

The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says “it is prudent to consider geoengineering’s potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment.”

Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.

But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air — making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested — could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.

Still, “we might get desperate enough to want to use it,” he added.

Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide — the chief human-caused greenhouse gas — out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.

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PDF version of “The Not-So Secret Ingredient: Stadis 450″ available

by qbit on Mar.04, 2009, under What are they?

I’ve uploaded a PDF version of The not-so-secret ingredient: Stadis 450 (dinonylnaphthalene sulfonic acid, barium salt).

Download the PDF here.

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Millions were in germ war tests

by qbit on Feb.10, 2009, under In the News, What are they?

Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 21 April 2002 10.23 BST

Much of Britain was exposed to bacteria sprayed in secret trials.

The Ministry of Defence turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public.

A government report just released provides for the first time a comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979.

Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told.

While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments.

The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any ‘inquisitive inquirer’ the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.

The tests, carried out by government scientists at Porton Down, were designed to help the MoD assess Britain’s vulnerability if the Russians were to have released clouds of deadly germs over the country.

In most cases, the trials did not use biological weapons but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless. But families in certain areas of the country who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry.

One chapter of the report, ‘The Fluorescent Particle Trials’, reveals how between 1955 and 1963 planes flew from north-east England to the tip of Cornwall along the south and west coasts, dropping huge amounts of zinc cadmium sulphide on the population. The chemical drifted miles inland, its fluorescence allowing the spread to be monitored. In another trial using zinc cadmium sulphide, a generator was towed along a road near Frome in Somerset where it spewed the chemical for an hour.

While the Government has insisted the chemical is safe, cadmium is recognised as a cause of lung cancer and during the Second World War was considered by the Allies as a chemical weapon.

In another chapter, ‘Large Area Coverage Trials’, the MoD describes how between 1961 and 1968 more than a million people along the south coast of England, from Torquay to the New Forest, were exposed to bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii , which mimics anthrax. These releases came from a military ship, the Icewhale, anchored off the Dorset coast, which sprayed the micro-organisms in a five to 10-mile radius.

The report also reveals details of the DICE trials in south Dorset between 1971 and 1975. These involved US and UK military scientists spraying into the air massive quantities of serratia marcescens bacteria, with an anthrax simulant and phenol.

Similar bacteria were released in ‘The Sabotage Trials’ between 1952 and 1964. These were tests to determine the vulnerability of large government buildings and public transport to attack. In 1956 bacteria were released on the London Underground at lunchtime along the Northern Line between Colliers Wood and Tooting Broadway. The results show that the organism dispersed about 10 miles. Similar tests were conducted in tunnels running under government buildings in Whitehall.

Experiments conducted between 1964 and 1973 involved attaching germs to the threads of spiders’ webs in boxes to test how the germs would survive in different environments. These tests were carried out in a dozen locations across the country, including London’s West End, Southampton and Swindon. The report also gives details of more than a dozen smaller field trials between 1968 and 1977.

In recent years, the MoD has commissioned two scientists to review the safety of these tests. Both reported that there was no risk to public health, although one suggested the elderly or people suffering from breathing illnesses may have been seriously harmed if they inhaled sufficient quantities of micro-organisms.

However, some families in areas which bore the brunt of the secret tests are convinced the experiments have led to their children suffering birth defects, physical handicaps and learning difficulties.

David Orman, an army officer from Bournemouth, is demanding a public inquiry. His wife, Janette, was born in East Lulworth in Dorset, close to where many of the trials took place. She had a miscarriage, then gave birth to a son with cerebral palsy. Janette’s three sisters, also born in the village while the tests were being carried out, have also given birth to children with unexplained problems, as have a number of their neighbours.

The local health authority has denied there is a cluster, but Orman believes otherwise. He said: ‘I am convinced something terrible has happened. The village was a close-knit community and to have so many birth defects over such a short space of time has to be more than coincidence.’

Successive governments have tried to keep details of the germ warfare tests secret. While reports of a number of the trials have emerged over the years through the Public Records Office, this latest MoD document – which was released to Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker – gives the fullest official version of the biological warfare trials yet.

Baker said: ‘I welcome the fact that the Government has finally released this information, but question why it has taken so long. It is unacceptable that the public were treated as guinea pigs without their knowledge, and I want to be sure that the Ministry of Defence’s claims that these chemicals and bacteria used were safe is true.’

The MoD report traces the history of the UK’s research into germ warfare since the Second World War when Porton Down produced five million cattle cakes filled with deadly anthrax spores which would have been dropped in Germany to kill their livestock. It also gives details of the infamous anthrax experiments on Gruinard on the Scottish coast which left the island so contaminated it could not be inhabited until the late 1980s.

The report also confirms the use of anthrax and other deadly germs on tests aboard ships in the Caribbean and off the Scottish coast during the 1950s. The document states: ‘Tacit approval for simulant trials where the public might be exposed was strongly influenced by defence security considerations aimed obviously at restricting public knowledge. An important corollary to this was the need to avoid public alarm and disquiet about the vulnerability of the civil population to BW [biological warfare] attack.’

Sue Ellison, spokeswoman for Porton Down, said: ‘Independent reports by eminent scientists have shown there was no danger to public health from these releases which were carried out to protect the public.

‘The results from these trials_ will save lives, should the country or our forces face an attack by chemical and biological weapons.’

Asked whether such tests are still being carried out, she said: ‘It is not our policy to discuss ongoing research.’

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NASA: hole-punched clouds “very unusual,” could be “facilitated by a passing airplane exhaust”

by qbit on Feb.09, 2009, under What are they?

From NASA Astronomy Pic of the Day site. Also see my other post “Anomalous holes burned in clouds

NASA can be a valuable source of information, but I never take anything it says at face value. They do a lot of amazing research, but ultimately they work for the military industrial complex.

NASA’s Explanation: What could create a huge hole in the clouds? Such a hole, likely hundreds of meters across, was photographed last month from a driveway near Mobile, Alabama, USA. Very unusual to see, hole-punch clouds like this are still the topic of meteorological speculation. A leading hypothesis holds that the hole-punch cloud is caused by falling ice-crystals. The ice-crystals could originate in a higher cloud or be facilitated by a passing airplane exhaust. If the air has just the right temperature and moisture content, the falling crystals will absorb water from the air and grow. For this to happen, the water must be so cold that all it needs is a surface to freeze on. The moisture lost from the air increases the evaporation rate from the cloud water droplets so they dissipate to form the hole. The now heavier ice crystals continue to fall and form the more tenuous wispy cloud-like virga seen inside and just below the hole. Water and ice from the virga evaporates before they reach the ground.

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