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At the dawn of our atmosphere, we live a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds. Sending over 50 miles above the poles in the summer, these clouds are known as night clouds or polar mesospheric clouds – the PMCs.
A recent NASA long-duration balloon mission observed these clouds for five days at home in the mesosphere. The photos just analyzed by scientists will help us better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans, lakes and other global atmospheres, and may even improve weather forecasts.
On July 8, 2018, NASA's PMC Turbo mission launched a giant balloon to survey PMCs 50 miles above the surface. For five days, the balloon has crossed the stratosphere from its launch in Esrange, Sweden, across the Arctic to western Nunavut, Canada.
During its flight, the on-board cameras captured 6 million high-resolution images of 120 terabytes of data, most of which included a variety of PMC displays, revealing the processes leading to turbulence. Scientists are now starting to browse the images and the first look has been promising.
"From what we've seen up to here, we expect to have a truly spectacular data set of this mission," said Dave Fritts, principal investigator of the PMC Turbo mission at Global Atmospheric Technologies and Science in Boulder, Colorado. "Our cameras have probably been able to capture really interesting events and we hope they will provide new information on these complex dynamics."
Nucilucent clouds melt into ice crystals on tiny meteor remains in the upper atmosphere. The results make the rippling clouds of a brilliant blue that are visible just after sunset in the polar regions during the summer.
These clouds are affected by what is called atmospheric gravity waves – caused by convection and elevation of air masses, for example when the air is pushed by mountain ranges. The waves play a major role in the transfer of energy from the lower atmosphere to the mesosphere.
"This is the first time we are able to visualize the flow of energy from larger gravity waves toward lower flow instabilities and lower turbulence in the upper atmosphere," he said. Fritts. "At these altitudes, you can literally see the gravitational waves breaking – like the waves of the ocean on the beach – and pouring into the turbulence."
The PMC Turbo balloon payload was equipped with seven imaging systems specifically designed to observe clouds. Each included a high-resolution camera, computer control and communication system, and 32 terabytes of data storage.
The seven imaging systems were designed to create a mosaic of expansive views extending over a hundred kilometers, each providing turbulence images as small as 20 meters wide. For the first time, a lidar or laser radar measured precise PMC altitudes as well as temperature fluctuations of gravity waves above and below PMCs.
"We know the structure of 2D waves from images, but in order to fully describe the waves, we must also measure the third dimension," said Bernd Kaifler, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center in Wessling, Germany. lidar experience of the balloon. "From lidar measurements, we can deduce the vertical wave structure, thus providing important data that would not have been available only during the imaging experiment."
Learning the causes and effects of turbulence will help scientists understand not only the structure and variability of the upper atmosphere, but also of other areas. Turbulence occurs in fluids throughout the universe and the results will help scientists better model it in all systems. In the end, the results will even help to improve weather forecasting models.
Understanding a wide range of processes in near-Earth space – including their interaction with the Earth's atmosphere and time – is a key element of NASA's heliophysics research. .
NASA is also studying night clouds with the spacecraft Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, launched in 2007 in low Earth orbit.
AIM monitors large scale cloud entities globally, but can only solve problems over a few kilometers. PMC Turbo helps complete the details, explaining what's happening at smaller scales where turbulence occurs.
The PMC Turbo payload has been successfully recovered at its landing site in the Canadian Arctic, and the recovered instruments are expected to contribute to future missions, including a planned mission in December over the United States. ;Antarctic.
The Wallops flight facility of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Virginia manages the agency's scientific balloon flight program with 10 to 15 flights per year from launch sites worldwide .
+ AIM Mission
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Landing! NASA's football-sized science balloon takes flight
Wallops Island VA (SPX) 03 Sep 2018
NASA has successfully launched a football-sized science ball, dubbed the "Big 60", on Friday, Aug. 17, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, for the first time in more than 15 years. A second test flight took place on August 25th.
On August 17, the 60 million cubic feet balloon reached a record high of 159,000 feet, allowing the payload and three flying experiments to fly for about eight hours.
The Big 60 is NASA's largest zero pressure balloon to date. If all the p … read more
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