Just clouds and just haloes
I enjoy clouds as well as rainbows, halos and other effects of sun light on water and ice. This is probably my dreamer side. It has nothing to do with my research or that of anyone else at OGL. Clouds can be spectacular, providing some "end of the world" atmosphere like the undulatus aspertus below.
Just clouds
The first of July 2001, just after lunch, half of the population of Chicago looked at the sky. For an hour, it was darker than usual. These clouds are undulatus asperatus (ondulating strongly, chaotically), a type of clouds observed sometimes in the great plains of the USA and Canada. These photos were taken near and at UIC.
Lenticularis clouds over Ross Island (East Antarctica), showing the very stratified nature of the atmosphere. Cap cloud over Mount Victoria (Ross Bay, East Antarctica).
Contrails (short for condensation trails) were named cirrus homogenitus in 2017
8:30 AM on July 5th 2016: Photo taken from a transatlantic flight descending on Charles de Gaule airport (near Paris, France). Contrails are high elevation ice clouds created by jet engines. These persistent contrails spread progressively and turn into cirrus clouds, identical to those forming naturally. Recent works indicate that contrail derived cirrus are contributing to anthropogenic climate forcing (see the review by Kärcher B., 2018, Nature Communication 9, 1824).
8:30 AM on July 5th 2016: Photo taken from a transatlantic flight descending on Charles de Gaule airport (near Paris, France). Contrails are high elevation ice clouds created by jet engines. These persistent contrails spread progressively and turn into cirrus clouds, identical to those forming naturally. Recent works indicate that contrail derived cirrus are contributing to anthropogenic climate forcing (see the review by Kärcher B., 2018, Nature Communication 9, 1824).
Recent contrails (middle) to contrail-derived cirrus clouds (top).
Above Charles de Gaule airport (France) on July 5th 2018
Just haloes
Sundogs
Victoria Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, Austral Spring 2010, the sun is behind the mountain and a sundog appeared.
Victoria Valley, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, Austral Spring 2010, the sun is behind the mountain and a sundog appeared.
Circumzenithal arc
From the beach of Northwestern University in Evanston (Illinois), as the sun was low, a circumzenithal arc formed as light from the sun was diffracted by ice in high altitude cirrus clouds (Sept 4, 2016).
From the beach of Northwestern University in Evanston (Illinois), as the sun was low, a circumzenithal arc formed as light from the sun was diffracted by ice in high altitude cirrus clouds (Sept 4, 2016).
