NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS ARE MISSING

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Something strange is happening 50 miles above Antarctica. Or rather, not happening. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs), which normally blanket the frozen continent in December, are almost completely missing. These images from NASA's AIM spacecraft compare Christmas Eve 2019 with Christmas Eve 2020:



"The comparison really is astounding," says Cora Randall of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "Noctilucent cloud frequencies are close to zero this year."

NLCs are Earth's highest clouds. They form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up from the poles to the edge of space. Water crystallizing around specks of meteor dust 83 km (~50 miles) above Earth's surface creates beautiful electric-blue structures, typically visible from November to February in the south, and May to August in the north.

A crucial point: Noctilucent clouds form during summer. And that's the problem. Although summer officially started in Antarctica one week ago, the southern stratosphere still seems to think it's winter. In particular, the stratospheric polar vortex, which should be breaking up around now, is stubbornly hanging on. The polar vortex chokes off gravity waves, which would normally carry water vapor into the upper atmosphere. Without water vapor, NLCs cannot form.

"The southern hemisphere stratosphere is very unusual this year," says Randall. "The ozone hole is exceptionally large, until recently zonal winds have been blowing in the wrong direction, and overall the stratosphere is much more 'winter-like' than it should be in December."

Eventually, the stratosphere will shift into its summer-like state, and NLCs can begin to blossom. But when? Researchers don't know. If the clouds remain suppressed only one more week, it will break previous records of low NLC activity in the southern hemisphere.

Source: SpaceWeather.com of 29 December 2020

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS OVER ARGENTINA: They're back. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs), recently missing, are once again circling the South Pole. And, in an unexpected twist, they've just appeared over Argentina as well.

"This is a very rare event," reports Gerd Baumgarten of Germany's Leibniz-Institute of Atmospheric Physics, whose automated cameras caught the clouds rippling over Rio Grande, Argentina (53.8S) on Jan. 3rd:

What's so strange about that? At this time of year, noctilucent clouds are supposed to be confined to Antarctic latitudes--not Argentina. In the whole history of atmospheric research, NLCs have been sighted at mid-southern latitudes only a handful of times.

"Personally, I am thrilled to see NLCs in Argentina, as I had not expected them to occur so far north," says Natalie Kaifler of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), who operates a lidar (laser radar) alongside one of Baumgarten's cameras.

Lidar echoes captured during the display confirm that these are genuine NLCs floating more than 80 km above Earth's surface:



NLCs are Earth's highest clouds. They form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up from the poles to the edge of space. Water crystallizing around specks of meteor dust ~83 km above Earth's surface create beautiful electric-blue structures, typically visible from November to February in the south, and May to August in the north.

This season has been unusual. The normal onset of NLCs in the south has been delayed for more than a month as strange weather patterns played out over Antarctica. Now, suddenly, they're back, and showing up in unexpected places.

Source: SpaceWeather.com of 8 January 2021