From spaceweather.com An apparition of polar stratospheric clouds is underway around the Arctic Circle. “It is almost as good as the aurora borealis,” says Göran Strand, who took this picture last night from Östersund, Sweden:
Eric Schandall of Oslo, Norway, adds this report: “We have seen them for three evenings over Oslo, with the ones on Jan. 13th being the most dramatic and beautiful so far.”
Also known as “nacreous” or “mother of pearl” clouds, these icy clouds form in the lower stratosphere when temperatures drop to around minus 85ºC. Sunlight shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm across produce the characteristic bright iridescent colors by diffraction and interference.
“Nacreous clouds far outshine and have much more vivid colours than ordinary iridescent clouds, which are very much poor relations and seen frequently all over the world,” writes atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. “Once seen they are never forgotten.”
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As far as units of measurement go, I prefer the FFF system: Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight. I suppose one could add the Fahrenheit to that, and call it the FFFF system. But as far as measuring temperature, the Kelvin and Rankine scales are naturally the best ones to use for any modern scientific calculations, with Rankine being best if you are using integers for the numbers (because of the slightly better accuracy).
Nice picture, cool colors.
Bill H, agfosterjr, et al. wonder: Is there CO2 in the stratosphere?
Sounds like there is.
Brian H says:
Au contraire!
The Fahrenheit (note the correct spelling) scale divides the range between freezing pure water and boiling pure water at sea level into 180 steps. 0°F is the freezing point of salt-saturated water, using the same steps. As the degrees are smaller, it is thus more precise than Celsius, (Note the correct spelling).
Some folks seem to have trouble thinking their own thoughts without being a supplicant to authority structures. The SI Authoritarians are that way. I suggest not letting them and their limitations bother you. But yes, F is just as rational and in many ways far more useful than C. (greater precision being one of them) Another is that, as originally designed, the scale between freezing and body temperature was divisible by 2, you can easily make your own thermometer by marking the two end points they using dividers (compass) to make the markings. ( 96 – 32= 64 in the original F scale. It later got recalibrated so we ended up with 98.6 body temp. A mistake, IMHO, as I’d like to be able to make a thermometer using only ME and a bucket of ice water… with dividers.)
At any rate, the actual scale used is entirely and totally irrelevant. ANY repeatable system would do. One could use the freeze and boil points of many other materials, and divide by base 2, or base 16, or base 12, or whatever; and get just as valid a system.
There is absolutely no need whatsoever for everyone to wear the same straightjacket. Personally, I’d rather have a base 60 system as it makes divisions a whole lot easier. (The same reason that the ‘decimal time’ of the French Revolution failed… and why we kept the 60 minute hour and minute…) Same reasons donuts are sold by the dozen. Easier to share with more sets of people… ( Nothing like 3 folks sharing 10 donuts to make the non-base-10 look really useful…)
@Blade:
And don’t forget math by the dozens and learning to use proper fractions.
BTW, for all the “SI Units Authoritarians”, please state, with absolute precision, every digit of what 1/3 of a meter is. I’ll wait…. BTW, 1/3 of a foot is 4 inches.
Oh, and if folks REALLY want to insist on rational units, we can all start using Rankine for temperature. Nice fine precision of F but with an origin at zero. Same as the mediocre Kelvin scale, but with much better precision 😉
If it were up to me, I’d likely use mercury in a vacuum freeze / boil as the ends and divide by base 60 / 360. Would be very useful and highly repeatable anywhere in the universe… But for normal human needs on this planet, a bit hard to get the vacuum… so using body core temp (that is a nice handy and ‘stable enough for everyday use’ standard) as one end, and the freeze point of water as the other, means I can make a passable thermometer all on my own if we every have a collapse of civilization (as seems to happen ever 1500 years or so; or about every 200 for individual empires / states / republics…)
At any rate, using base 10 for everything is highly limiting and only really of advantage to folks who can’t do proper fractions. Using fractional math you can have infinite precision in many normal things, can do it in your head, and can choose your level of precision via your choice of divisor length as the job demands.
Pi can be 22/7 for most things. 333/106 if you want more (accurate to 3.1415) . In ancient times, 25/8 was used for early ‘rough work’ and 256/81 by the Egyptians for a bit more precision. Pyramids used 1760/280 as a working number for 2Pi (avoiding the multiply by building it into the fraction) so we could say they used 880/280 for Pi (accurate to 3.14 and a bit) which you can see reduces to 22/7 quickly ( divide 88 by 4. Divide 28 by 4. )
Now say you want 2Pi somethings (as in calculating circles) that 333/106 becomes 333/53 with NO loss of precision and no calculator needed. Large problems can be ‘set up’ that way and the various terms ‘crossed’ as you simplify until very little is left to actually calculate. (And often you don’t even need to actually Do the calculation, just carry it forward…)
So a 3 foot radius circle has 2Pi3 circumference or 999/53 feet to 4 “decimal places” (after the point mark… more if you count the whole part…). All done in my head faster than I can type and with no loss of precision. I’ll wait while you compute 2 x 3.1415 x 3 ….
I was very lucky to have a Science Teacher in about 5th grade who took the time to explain all this to us (when teaching us fractions…) and another in high school who reinforced the historical value of fraction based math. It was actually a pretty big stink at the time of the French Revolution when the Decimal Authoritarians were trying to cudgel everyone into decimal math and the folks doing the science (who had to do the math long hand) were trying to point out the “issues” this brought with it…
So, for me, I’ll keep my “fraction rich” base 12 feet. Base 60 seconds and hours. Etc.
Oh, btw, we still use 360 degrees for the circle for the same reason… Much easier to plot courses et al and do fractional adjustments… And ever notice that a yard is 360 tenths of an inch? 6 x 60 is a very factor rich number…
But don’t worry. We all understand that some folks are “fraction challenged” and can only count things using 10, like counting on fingers… 😉
Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same at minus 40 ( -40 ) degrees. Hence the abreviated term FC ( freaking cold) or some other choice words.
Great photo.
Re. Bill H and Commie Bob:
Interesting comments. As far as I know (or think), the evidence for ionospheric cooling is pretty good, not like the non-evidence of low altitude warming. NASA has been having trouble predicting reentry trajectories, and they are keen to blame the shrinking ionosphere. CB presents a plausible scenario: being lighter, H2 moves faster, travels further, and so rises higher; some molecules escape altogether. Some H2 burns and some escapes–I don’t know at what ratio–I don’t know the residence time of H2.
But this argues poorly against CO2 at the level of the highest clouds. It is probably there whether it is responsible for reduced orbital decay or not. And I’m just wondering if the peculiar color of these clouds could have anything to do with CO2 crystals at these very cold temperatures. There may be some good reason against it, just asking.
If you separate He and O2 balloons by a semipermeable membrane, the O2 balloon will first expand at the expense of the He, and then the reverse will take place. My good high school physics teacher told us this was because of the different sizes of the molecules; as I understood his explanation at the time, the little molecules could fit more easily through the holes in the membrane. But this is not really a correct accounting: rather the smaller mass of the He (molecules) makes it bounce around faster, providing it more opportunities to find its way through the porous maze.
Likewise, winds aid mixing in the way stirring dissolves sugar. But the solute will never filter out just because of its molecular weight properties. Nor will CO2 separate out just because it is heavier except as CB suggests, at very high altitudes where a longer mean free path and higher velocity can get it up higher. –AGF
Woops, I mixed up the CO2 and H2 pretty good myself in that last paragraph. The H2 has the higher velocity; CO2 has some of the lowest. BTW, Argon is heavy, but it’s up there adding to the colors of the northern lights, I suppose. –AGF
@ur momisugly EM Smith
Wow, nice argument about fractions. I have never quite thought about it in that way consciously. Though, I have unconsciously approached many problems in that way, though always wondered where the 12’s and 60’s, and such came from. I now have something new to teach a few teenagers.
Beautiful picture. It never fails to delight me what aesthetic pleasures there are to be found in Nature, whether atmospheric phenomena like this or fractal / chaos patterns, etc.
@E.M.Smith – There’s an even more (one might almost say scarily) accurate approximation to pi which I’ve used once or twice in integer computing and is quite easily remembered:
(1) Take the first three odd numbers … 1 3 5
(2) Double ’em up … 113355
(3) Split that in half … 113 355
(4) Make those halves into … 355/113
Result – 3.14159292. Divided by pi = 1.000000085.
That’s near enough for rock’n’roll (or climate science)!
Metrification is the dumbing down of the population, converting to the metric system that is based on nothing real world is a destructor of original thought. Ask why computers are not programmed using the decimal system?
Great comment E.M. Smith. The sexagesimal (base 60) system was brought by the Sumerians, who somehow started with a base 10, but shifted to base 60. Smith neatly summarizes why they would do so. The hard divisions by 3 are made easy. The reasons they went with base 60 instead of base 30 have probably to do with the division by 12 (a factor of 60 but not 30), a very important number in astronomy (the sky was and is still divided in 12 houses or zodiacs, so a system that allowed easy division by 12 was probably god sent). Next time you look at your watch (or your protractor), remember you are looking at thousands of years of legacy.
Just an aside note about Fahrenheit and Celsius:
When you have a sick infant/baby they always use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius (least here in Can.).
Probably the reason for a 360 degree circle is the large number of divisors.that result
in a whole number: 24. No other number near its size can be divided so neatly .
An ancient accomplishment,
Yep, absolutely.. And you said it much better.
Personally I believe the dumbing down effect that base-10 and the Metric system has done to traditional measurement units, is comparable to what Twitter and Text-Messaging is doing to languages and communication in general. Left to their own devices even an adult population will voluntarily revert to being children taking the path of least resistance.
It is fun though to try to explain to the young’ins that fractions are exact and precise, and back in the day if you tried to reduce X=1/3 to X=0.3333 you would get your knuckles rapped by a wooden ruler (dad, what’s a ruler?).
If the elementary schools taught base-2 and boolean operations and simple truth tables, at the same time they learn their ’10 by’s’, the kids would get a early start to learning something they almost never ever learn these days – logic. I mentioned base-16 because of its favor amongst programmers (due to its higher density per volume and lending itself nicely to bytes), but of course you are exactly correct, any given numbering system is arbitrary. No one is ‘superior’ to another, but one is almost always better suited for a given situation.
It’s kinda like light bulbs again! None are perfect, but there are places where one is better suited than another. We should all be able to agree that dictating any one is the mistake humans inevitably make (particularly those spineless humans that are natural born followers who possess neither logic nor common sense). It is now easy to imagine the government of the 1880’s dictating DC current or Horse Carriages if they had our modern brainless liberals in their constituency. Or perhaps in the 1980’s dictating Motorola over Intel, or … [fill in the blank].
agfosterjr says:
January 15, 2012 at 8:48 pm
Woops, I mixed up the CO2 and H2 pretty good myself in that last paragraph. The H2 has the higher velocity; CO2 has some of the lowest. BTW, Argon is heavy, but it’s up there adding to the colors of the northern lights, I suppose. –AGF
;———————————————————————————————————————-
The colors are a combination of red, green and blue.
When an electron collides with either a nitrogen molecule, a oxygen molecule or an oxygen atom. it causes an electronic excitation of the molecule or atom.
When the excitation decays, the molecule or atom emits a photon.
The red is from atomic oxygen, the blue is from the molecular oxygen, and the green is from the nitrogen molecule.
The collision comes about because the electrons are following the Earth’s magnetic field lines and the gas molecule or atom is randomly bouncing off other molecules, atoms. ions or photons.
To conserve charge, protons (or positive charges) move in the opposite direction of the electron (or the negative charge) flow.
Carbon dioxide isn’t a player.
AJB says:
January 15, 2012 at 11:27 am
Stratosphere Temperature Watch 2011/2012
;————————————————————————————
Thanks for posting that link – exactly what I was looking for.
I always thought the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was tripping when he painted The Scream. No longer after seeing that picture.
Great video Sparks, thanks!
Agile Aspect says:
January 16, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Are you talking about the northern lights or the much lower nacreous clouds? And do Argon spectra ever show up in the northern lights? (There should be about 20 times as much Argon as CO2.) It should be possible to reproduce the conditions of the clouds in a lab to see whether CO2 can precipitate at such low concentration. –AGF
Eric Schandall of Oslo, Norway
Do you have a URL to the teperature and wind soundings over Oslo on the days?
I’ve been unable to find one. The Norwegian Met Office web site isn’t nearly as good as that of the Australian BoM.
There’s a sailplane high altitude project that would be interested.
agfosterjr says:
January 17, 2012 at 11:30 am
“Are you talking about the northern lights or the much lower nacreous clouds?”
Northern lights as per your comment above (roughly above 100km.)
“And do Argon spectra ever show up in the northern lights?”
The main players in the visible range are oxygen and nitrogen. It’s possible argon does too but it’s a inert gas (outer electronic shell is full) and is at low concentrations compared to oxygen and nitrogen. The spectral lines may exist but may be too faint to detect or overlap with oxygen or nitrogen. It’s also possible the argon excitations are in the UV range. I don’t know much about argon – this is a WAG.
WAG? I looked it up: “wild ass guess.” I feel smarter now. –AGF