Strange cloud in satellite information catches curiosity of researchers
A “peculiar” cloud, as NASA phrases it, was located in excess of the Caspian Sea on Might 28. The cloud provides an attention-grabbing scenario review of how satellites can detect these types of phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere.
Experts applied NASA’s Terra satellite to look at the cloud as it moved toward land and then dissipated in buy to master more about how compact stratocumulus functions like this one type.
Stratocumulus clouds have a tendency to be clumped together at very low altitudes in the atmosphere this one was spotted at about 1,500 meters (5,000 ft) previously mentioned Earth’s surface. What manufactured it really stand out in new photographs captured by Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), however, was the cloud’s challenging boundary.
Linked: Satellite spies gigantic ‘fuzzball’ clouds spreading in the vicinity of Australia coastline
“Sharp edges are often fashioned when dry, heat air coming from land collides with colder moist air over the ocean, and the cloud kinds at that boundary,” Bastiaan van Diedenhoven, an atmospheric scientist at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Analysis, claimed in a NASA assertion (opens in new tab) posted June 16.
It can be unusual to see this form of cloud in Japanese Europe, as opposed to over an ocean spot, though its appearance could be stated by the Caspian Sea becoming the world’s biggest inland physique of drinking water. The sea is surrounded by nations around the world these types of as Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Ga and Azerbaijan, to name a handful of.
“You frequently see this [cloud type] off the west coast of Africa, but at a great deal bigger scales,” van Diedenhoven included. He proposed the cloud could have shaped when warmer, drier air that quite possibly arrived from the Balkans (the region all around Greece) strike colder and moister air about the Caspian Sea.
The cloud commenced to dissipate in the hours immediately after it was captured in the late early morning about the Caspian. By the afternoon it had moved northwest about the sea to the coastline of Russia, near Makhachkala at the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. The cloud at some point dissipated completely as it moved about land.
Terra (opens in new tab) is an very extensive-managing Earth observation mission, owning introduced in December 1999 and continuing to run in very good wellbeing as it ways the quarter-century mark in place.
The reward of very long missions like Terra is they allow for researchers to observe modifications in the Earth’s setting utilizing the very same sensors, allowing for for measurement consistency. That stated, NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) do send new satellites aloft to capture distinct forms of measurements — and to serve as a bit of redundancy for more mature missions.
Before in the calendar year, NASA’s science and Earth science guide, Katherine Calvin, stated the company is operating on a extra detailed strategy to refresh its fleet of more mature satellites, like Terra. Other illustrations of more mature operational missions contain Aqua (released in 2002) and Aura (2004).
Abide by Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook.
A “peculiar” cloud, as NASA phrases it, was located in excess of the Caspian Sea on Might 28. The cloud provides an attention-grabbing scenario review of how satellites can detect these types of phenomena in Earth’s atmosphere.
Experts applied NASA’s Terra satellite to look at the cloud as it moved toward land and then dissipated in buy to master more about how compact stratocumulus functions like this one type.
Stratocumulus clouds have a tendency to be clumped together at very low altitudes in the atmosphere this one was spotted at about 1,500 meters (5,000 ft) previously mentioned Earth’s surface. What manufactured it really stand out in new photographs captured by Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), however, was the cloud’s challenging boundary.
Linked: Satellite spies gigantic ‘fuzzball’ clouds spreading in the vicinity of Australia coastline
“Sharp edges are often fashioned when dry, heat air coming from land collides with colder moist air over the ocean, and the cloud kinds at that boundary,” Bastiaan van Diedenhoven, an atmospheric scientist at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Analysis, claimed in a NASA assertion (opens in new tab) posted June 16.
It can be unusual to see this form of cloud in Japanese Europe, as opposed to over an ocean spot, though its appearance could be stated by the Caspian Sea becoming the world’s biggest inland physique of drinking water. The sea is surrounded by nations around the world these types of as Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Ga and Azerbaijan, to name a handful of.
“You frequently see this [cloud type] off the west coast of Africa, but at a great deal bigger scales,” van Diedenhoven included. He proposed the cloud could have shaped when warmer, drier air that quite possibly arrived from the Balkans (the region all around Greece) strike colder and moister air about the Caspian Sea.
The cloud commenced to dissipate in the hours immediately after it was captured in the late early morning about the Caspian. By the afternoon it had moved northwest about the sea to the coastline of Russia, near Makhachkala at the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. The cloud at some point dissipated completely as it moved about land.
Terra (opens in new tab) is an very extensive-managing Earth observation mission, owning introduced in December 1999 and continuing to run in very good wellbeing as it ways the quarter-century mark in place.
The reward of very long missions like Terra is they allow for researchers to observe modifications in the Earth’s setting utilizing the very same sensors, allowing for for measurement consistency. That stated, NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) do send new satellites aloft to capture distinct forms of measurements — and to serve as a bit of redundancy for more mature missions.
Before in the calendar year, NASA’s science and Earth science guide, Katherine Calvin, stated the company is operating on a extra detailed strategy to refresh its fleet of more mature satellites, like Terra. Other illustrations of more mature operational missions contain Aqua (released in 2002) and Aura (2004).
Abide by Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook.