Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An increase in Noctilucent clouds, strange illuminated streamers of light at the edge of space, has been blamed on global warming.
According to the SFGate;
Mystery lights in space increasing, moving south, potential sign of global warming
Strange blue lights glowing on the edge of space first appeared over polar regions in 1885 and today, sightings are becoming increasingly common, and now the phenomenon is moving into lower latitudes including Northern California.
Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, these glowing space clouds may be a celestial siren, warning of Earth’s global warming, according to some scientists.
Last year WUWT reported that Noctilucent clouds were on the increase, and predicted that global warming would be blamed. However, a NASA press release suggests Noctilucent clouds are more likely to be associated with decreased solar activity.
To study long-term changes in noctilucent clouds, Russell and his colleagues used historical temperature and water vapor records and a validated model to translate this data into information on the presence of the clouds. They used temperature data from 2002 to 2011 from NASA’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics, or TIMED, mission and water vapor data from NASA’s Aura mission from 2005 to 2011. They used a model previously developed by Mark Hervig, a co-author on the paper at GATS, Inc., in Driggs, Idaho.
The team tested the model by comparing its output to observations from the Osiris instrument on the Swedish Odin satellite, which launched in 2001, and the SHIMMER instrument on the U.S. Department of Defense STPSat-1 mission, both of which observed low level noctilucent clouds over various time periods during their flights. The output correlated extremely well to the actual observations, giving the team confidence in their model.
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Russell and his team will research further to determine if the noctilucent cloud frequency increase and accompanying temperature decrease over the 10 years could be due to a reduction in the sun’s energy and heat, which naturally occurred as the solar output went from solar maximum in 2002 to solar minimum in 2009.
Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/appearance-of-night-shining-clouds-has-increased/
I’ll bet they are. Anything to hitch up to the glo-warm climate gravy bandwagon.
May as well go biblical. Red moon tetrad and blue clouds being signs
in the sky with a much earlier provenance than AGW.
“Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
For the customs of the peoples are futile”
Jeremiah recommends not getting your theology from Youtube. 🙂 :D:
I always love the term “according to some scientists” …. reminds me of the parody on the Goodies
Tim: Look at this! Nine out of every ten doctors agree that people who don’t eat Sunbeam sliced bread will get squashed by elephants!
Graeme: That’s right. Mind you, it did take us a long time to find the right nine doctors
The big question is — what do the noctilucent clouds do to albedo, assuming not unreasonably that they are there day and night? A 1% change in albedo makes a huge difference in forcing as it is taken “off the top”, directly proportional to the ~1370 W/m^2 TOA insolation. This could be a missing mechanism for global cooling in times of low solar activity, unexpected because it occurs well above the troposphere or even the stratosphere where we sort of understand some things.
There is a short novella by Murray Leinster (class SF author) wherein his main character saves a borderline world — one so cold that the CO2 in its atmosphere is about to fall as snow, causing its greenhouse effect to vanish and irreversibly transforming it into a ball of ice and frozen air — by lofting photoluminescent metal gas into the space surrounding the planet, putting inside a “comet’s tail”. This basically surrounds the planet with a weak “space blanket”, and warms it enough to rescue it from oblivion and then some. However, like all clouds one has to account for increased daytime cooling due to the increased dayside albedo before worrying about the reduced nighttime cooling, and for the Earth as a whole the balance is towards cooling, not warming.
One wonders what the major albedo experiments are showing…
rgb
l have been wondering for awhile now if there is a link between the lack of warming over the north pole during the summer months and the growth in night shining cloud. ln recent years during the winter months the air temps have spent most of the time above the long term average over the north pole. But during the summer months the air temps have stuck very close to the long term average. lts as if there is some limit stopping them from going higher. Am wondering if this due to increase in night shining cloud.
On a navex out to 20W from the UK I once saw a nacreous cloud right out over the Atlantic and, the next night, a patch of noctilucent cloud at the same location. It would seem reasonable to see if the two phenomena occur together, as both are formed in the stratosphere.
If so, why would there be more nacreous clouds? I know nothing about them and why they form — they seem quite rare beasts.
JF.
Why its obvious, AGW is causing the sky to fall, bawk bawk bawk bawk.
do I really need /sarc
Does anyone have any knowledge that they’ll share on the difference in energy required to form clouds at varying altitudes, given the same aerosols and water concentrations? I am curious.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/463940main_atmosphere-layers2_full.jpgwo
That region is very weird, very interesting. About 96 km or 60-65 miles is the layer tested by the ATREX mission.
“The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) is a Heliophysics sounding rocket mission that will gather information needed to better understand the process responsible for the high-altitude jet stream located 60 to 65 miles above the surface of the Earth.
The high-altitude jet stream is higher than the one commonly reported in weather forecasts. The winds found in this upper jet stream typically have speeds of 200 to well over 300 mph and create rapid transport from the Earth’s mid latitudes to the polar regions. This jet stream is located in the same region where strong electrical currents occur in the ionosphere. It is therefore a region with a lot of electrical turbulence, of the type that can adversely affect satellite and radio communications.”
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/463940main_atmosphere-layers2_full.jpg
What are some possible inputs for the electron density, wind speeds, and changing latitudes of all of these atmospheric layers?
1. Fast electrons from the sun, possibly interacting with the Van Allen belts, and coupled with the ionosphere
http://www.satnews.com/images_upload/777812999/NASA_VanAllen.jpg
2. ionizing radiation from the sun
http://www.teraphysics.com/images/nonionizing.png
3. changing magnetic field of earth
4. variable efield between earth’s surface and ionospheric layer which rapidly oscillates during lightning storms and is also linked to the ionosphere through these discharges above the clouds called sprites.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
And yet they accuse us of being superstitious. These people see their dread demon CO2 and its evil works everywhere.
On the disappearance of noctilucent clouds during the January 2005 solar proton events
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006GL028106/full
“A possible connection between the January 2005 solar proton events (SPEs) and the partial disappearance of Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) in the southern polar mesopause region is studied. Space-borne measurements of the NLC occurrence rate made with SCIAMACHY on Envisat as well as temperature measurements with MLS on Aura are employed. Immediately after the onset of the enhanced solar particle precipitation on January 16, 2005, we observe a severe decrease in the NLC occurrence rate. Between 70°S–80°S the NLC occurrence rate drops from about 80% to less than 20% within the period of enhanced solar proton fluxes. Throughout this period an anti-correlation between NLC occurrence rate and temperatures at NLC altitude is found, and the disappearance of NLCs is apparently caused by increasing temperatures. Potential mechanisms leading to the warming are discussed.”
A better understanding of the potential impact of solar proton events as well as energetic electron events is required, particularly since SPEs occur more frequently during solar maximum, and a solar cycle variation in NLC occurrence frequencies or NLC albedos may be introduced.
Seems to me that the increased recent noctilucent clouds have been due to longer and quieter solar periods. There have been historical reports in the past of amazing noctilucent cloud events frequently shown around the Little Ice Age and early 20th century. Maybe what’s been observed should also occur in the northern polar mesopause region too, with noticeable increased noctilucent clouds.
One of my toenails went all funny and the doctor gave some anti-fungal nail varnish.
I reckon that was global warming too, should I report it to Gavin Schmitt?
“Strange blue light glowing at the edge of space first appeared over polar regions in 1885. . .” As I recall from an earlier WUWT post, there were no scientists or polar observers in polar regions before 1885. This NLC article is an example of argument from ignorance
Sent from my iPhone
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“Strange blue lights glowing on the edge of space first appeared over polar regions in 1885”
Um, I think that should be “…were first noticed in 1885…”.
Rather like the “hole” in the Ozone layer, they were there all the time but nobody looked, or had the instruments to see.
Before 1885 these lights were seen in Northern Europe on occasions and a polar visit wasn’t always necessary. The Vikings and our Scandinavian ancestors used to watch the northern lights and they were seen in Northern Canada and Northern areas of Russia and Asia too. Not that nobody looked, you didn’t need to visit the polar regions to see it during past history.