Strange clouds are signs of change!

Meteorologist Rich Apuzzo

If the earth’s climate were compared to a 1000-piece puzzle of the human face, we would have only the eyes and part of the nose completed, with hundreds of unconnected pieces scattered across the table and many others missing altogether…lost somewhere else in the house.  The fact is that we don’t have all the pieces of the climate puzzle.  We’re discovering new ones every year and even realizing that the ones we thought we placed correctly are not fitting as well as we hoped.  This puzzle won’t be finished anytime soon, but the more we stare at the pieces, the more into focus the puzzle becomes.

Yesterday I received a notification from SpaceWeather.com about a show of Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) from around the northern hemisphere.  While reading this, take a moment to read the link provided about Noctilucent Clouds, especially noting the locations at which they’re usually found (50-70 degrees north and south) and the reason they form in the summer (coldest time of year in the Mesosphere).  Also, open a separate tab or browser window and look at these recent photos of NLC in the USA and around the world.  Now let’s look at this puzzle piece a little further.

Okay, what do we know about NLCs? 

They form 45 to 60 miles up in the atmosphere in an area known as the Mesosphere.  Nothing man does (aside from the occasional space shuttle or failing satellites) can put moisture or pollution into that part of our world, though it is speculated that extremely powerful volcanoes can push natural pollutants that high over time and we know that natural space debris (meteors, etc.) regularly pounds the outer atmosphere. 

We also know that NLCs have been sighted for over 120 years, and prior to that they may have existed, but may have been confused with clouds in the lower atmosphere.  If you’re looking at the photos I talked about, you can see that NLCs look like regular clouds, except that they tend to be a bright blue and are visible well after sunset. 

Our best understanding is that they form as the Mesosphere cools during the summer months of June-August in the northern hemisphere.  The sun’s heating of the earth doesn’t reach the Mesosphere until autumn and winter, so this is the coldest time of year up there. 

From the Wikipedia article I linked to, we also know that the observance of NLCs has been “increasing in frequency, brightness and extent”, and let me add that over the past few years we have seen a dramatic increase in NLCs (at the same time the planet has been cooling).

We also know that clouds absorb or reflect solar radiation (sometimes both, but at different wavelengths), but either way, it’s less solar radiation reaching the earth.  Just think about a cloudy day vs. a sunny day here in the lower atmosphere.  All other things being equal, a cloudy day will be cooler than a sunny day.  Clouds also act to trap heat in the lower atmosphere, but with time, the amount of heat trapped is overcome by the diminished incoming radiation and cooling will occur.

Well now, what do we have happening in the Mesosphere, right on the edge of space?  We have increasingly cloudy skies!  Even though you don’t see them during the day, the NLCs are there, and now we know they are being observed as far south as 41 degrees latitude…approximately a line from New York to Pittsburgh to Indianapolis to Kansas City to Denver to Salt Lake City to about Redding in northern California.  A similar line, though slightly further north, lies across Europe and Asia.

The clouds are thin, but the coverage is thousands of square miles across and even a small percentage of reduced sunshine over such a broad area and over time will be measurable here on earth.  But wait, there’s more.  Remember that the sun is in a minimum and astrophysicists aren’t even sure if the new solar cycle has started.  Just look at the left side of that SpaceWeather.com web page and you’ll see an image of the sun (which is “blank”) showing sunspots, or lack thereof.  We are in a deep solar minimum, which in plain English means that we’re getting a lot less energy from the sun than during the active periods of the past 30-50 years (at which time we recorded some warming…hmm). 

If the sun is weaker, the upper atmosphere is colder (more NLCs) and there are more clouds blocking some of the incoming solar radiation…AND we are seeing a cooling trend in both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean (even the new El Nino is weak and may well dissipate this fall or winter), there is reason for concern, but not from warming.

Since NLCs are a fairly new observation (compared to the time mankind has been on earth), we don’t know if these clouds are a sign of increased cooling leading to the next ice age…but we do know this.  There will be another ice age, and we do know that the planet should be heading in that direction soon (on a relative geologic time scale).  I am not good at complex mathematics, but I can do simple addition, and when you add all the elements working against warming, and the satellite and ocean temperature observations confirming global cooling, the bottom line has to be continued cooling, and at an increased rate in coming decades…

I started this article with the puzzle analogy, and I would be remiss if I did not remain consistent with the analogy.  There is still much that we don’t understand about our weather and climate, and some pieces have yet to be discovered, but much like a good detective, sometimes you don’t need all the evidence to solve the crime as long as the pieces you already have make a solid case.  The solid case here is that whatever warming we may have witnessed in the past 100 years (and even that is up for debate because of bad sensors and poor guidelines for instrument shelters and data recording), the trend has shifted, and all the CO2 in the world…and there’s plenty of it…is not having nearly the effect that some will have you believe, and new studies show that it may be a non-factor.  In fact, we also know that many warming cycles came before increases in CO2, not after, and that CO2 levels have been magnitudes greater in the past than they are today.

Let’s stop trying to force the CO2 piece into the puzzle.  It doesn’t go where we’re trying to put it.  Step back, and take a longer look, and with time, the picture will become clearer, and maybe, someday, the puzzle will be complete.

Rich Apuzzo
Chief Meteorologist
Skyeye Weather LLC
www.skyeyeweather.com