Friday, July 6, 2018

How to capture the eerie nighttime clouds of climate change

<em>Noctilucent clouds over Wismar, Germany in 2011. </em>

Strange clouds that glow in the night sky are getting easier to see — and it could be because of all the methane we’re pumping into the atmosphere, a new study says.

The bad news is that methane is a greenhouse gas that’s contributing to global warming. But the good news is that more methane means that more of us might get a chance to see these stunning, night-shining — or noctilucent — clouds, according to the study, which was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Noctilucent clouds form around the poles in the summer months, when ice crystallizes around shards of disintegrating meteoroids, volcanic dust, and even rocket plumes 50 miles above the surface, according to NASA. Here on the ground, we can see...

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