Photos: Honeycomb Clouds "Communicate," Rain in Unison

[Judi Lynn]

Photos: Honeycomb Clouds "Communicate," Rain in Unison
Cloud "Communication"
Satellite image courtesy NASA

Wisps of clouds form a honeycomb-like structure (center) over the Peruvian coast (file photo).

Such open-cell marine clouds "communicate" with each other so that they constantly oscillate, or rearrange themselves, in a synchronized pattern, according to a new study from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Inside the thick clouds of the cell walls, water droplets grow, then fall as rain, and the walls dissipate. The raindrops evaporate as they fall, cooling the air, which generates downward air currents.

When the downdrafts hit the ocean surface, they flow outward and collide with each other and "force the air to move upward again" and "form new open cell walls at a different location," explained study co-author Hailong Wang, a cloud physicist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

More:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/photogalleries/100820-cloud-pictures-science-honeycomb-global-warming/

[Kurovski]

1. I love it.

It reads like poetry.

[izquierdista]

2. New type of cloud?

I don't think so. The physics was explained a hundred years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9nard_cell

[ensho]

3. how neat

nt

[Orsino]

4. The Horror of the Heights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horror_of_the_Heights

Joyce-Armstrong takes his monoplane to a height of 40,000 feet and is nearly hit by three meteors. It is then that he learns that his speculations are right: entire ecosystems (air-jungles) exist high in the atmosphere, and are inhabited by huge, gelatinous, semi-solid creatures. After going through a flock of jellyfish-like and snake-like beings, Joyce-Armstrong is attacked by a more solid-looking vulture-like creature, which he narrowly escapes from. He then returns to the ground.

The aviator writes he will be going up again to the air-jungle to bring back proof of his discoveries, but here the fragment ends, save for one last sentence which reads:

"Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"