Mysterious Clouds More Common Due to Climate Change?
Mysterious "night-shining clouds" that light up the polar skies have become more luminous and frequent in recent years—and climate change may be the culprit, scientists announced Monday.
So-called noctilucent clouds, which streak across the sky in vibrant colors during polar summers, are ten times brighter than previously believed, according to recent data from NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite.
The data, collected during two polar cloud seasons, also suggest the formations appear daily, are more widespread, and have started to form at lower latitudes than before.
The AIM mission is the first detailed exploration of the clouds, which form about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface—"literally on the edge of space," AIM principal investigator James Russell III said yesterday at a press briefing at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco, California.
The air there is a thousand times drier than the Sahara, and
