NASA satellite images taken late last year captured a strange phenomenon in the skies off eastern Russia, coinciding with an “unusually low” drop in temperatures, the agency reported in a recent online post.
Captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite, inside a cloud formation just east of Sakhalin Island, Russia’s largest island that separates the Sea of Okhotsk to the east. I saw a series of strange parallel lines forming. The Sea of Japan extends to the southwest.
It’s about the size of a school bus. Terra Launched in 1999, the satellite studies Earth’s climate through its atmosphere and its connections to various planetary features, including land and oceans. Equipped with five instruments that can measure different features of the Earth, Terra will help scientists understand how human activities affect the planet and how natural disasters affect human population centers and ecosystems. Collect data to help you measure.
Through the lens of the camera eye, modis The instrument visualizes any point on Earth from its orbital position every one to two days and records its observations in 36 spectral bands. It will be the most comprehensive of all sensors on board the Terra satellite, tracking the largest array of Earth’s vital signs. .
On December 28, 2023, Terra’s MODIS detected a strange formation of parallel cumulus clouds over the Sea of Okhotsk. These visually striking, unusual cloudy structures are a well-known phenomenon to atmospheric scientists.
Horizontal convection rolls, more commonly known as “horizontal convection rolls”.street of clouds” These strange-looking structures form in the troposphere when pockets of cold, dry air exit warm coastal waters and begin to pick up moisture rising from the ocean. The condensation of the resulting vapor forms a cloud, causing the colder parts of the surrounding air to sink.
The atmosphere over Russia’s east coast is ideal for the formation of such landforms, which generally appear in the same direction as the prevailing winds. The frigid northwest wind from Siberia that blows into the Sea of Okhotsk isfactory” Ice and clouds form, and temperatures on Sakhalin Island often plummet to -6 degrees Fahrenheit (-21 degrees Celsius) during this time.
In photos published on NASA’s Earth Observatory page, stratospheric conditions in the Arctic produced clouds featuring a striking rainbow of colors.
“These ethereal polar stratospheric clouds develop in extremely cold conditions and have recently become visible to observers at lower latitudes than usual,” writes Lindsey Dorman. In an entry on the Earth Observatory’s website The phenomenon is explained using satellite images from NASA.
According to a data model created by the space agency’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), temperatures in the Arctic stratosphere were extremely low at the time the cloud path appeared off the coast of Russia (see above).
In support of NASA’s Earth science missions, GMAO provides modeling and data assimilation to enhance information obtained from NASA satellite imagery and provide additional analysis and information about events occurring in the atmosphere as well as on land and oceans. Provide predictions.
Additional information about the formation of Cloud Street can be found heremore information about NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office can be found at: GMAO research site.
Micah Hanks is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Debrief. He can be reached via email: micah@thedebrief.org.follow his work micahhanks.com And in X: @micahhanks.