Last month I wrote about the damage that bad space weather can do to satellites, the electric grid, radio and TV transmissions, and GPS navigation. Though space weather can kill a satellite(*) bad weather is temporary. Not so with space junk.

Since 1957 when the Space Age began, our unused equipment has created a garbage patch in outer space. Over the years we’ve launched 5,000+ satellites though only 1,300 are operational today. There’s a lot of junk up there that’s out of control (can’t be navigated anymore) and potentially explosive.

Even if it can’t explode, space junk is dangerous to active satellites because it travels so fast. In Low Earth Orbit, where the International Space Station lives, everything travels at 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/hour). A crash at that speed, even with a tiny object, can destroy a satellite. When a satellite dies something electronic fails here on Earth.

Meanwhile we’re launching more satellites every year at a faster pace than before. At the end of 2018 it had taken a decade to launch 1,000 CubeSat nano-satellites, only four-inches across, but there are plans to add 1,000 more by 2021. Outer space is so crowded that NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) work every day to steer satellites away from dangerous space debris.

The 2016 video above describes space junk and how we’ve coped with it so far. Note that it doesn’t talk about CubeSats because the video predates those plans.

ESA’s 2017 video below describes the problem in technical terms with dramatic background music. I’ve cued the video to start at Low Earth Orbit. Watch for two minutes (beyond the first fade-to-black) and you’ll see lots of collisions.

Yow! It’s crowded up there.

(videos from PBS It’s OK To Be Smart and the European Space Agency (ESA) on YouTube)

(*) Space weather killed Telstar 401 in 1997.

This month a KDKA viewer saw unusual clouds like breaking waves in the sky as he was traveling on the Turnpike to Philadelphia.

Our planet isn’t the only one that has these clouds. This photo of Saturn’s north polar vortex shows Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds on the spinning edge. Photographed by the Cassini spacecraft in April 2013 and colorized by NASA, this image is called The Rose but is actually a violent, relentless storm. And it’s big!

According to the Cassini Mission at NASA, “Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).”

Our own polar vortex is mild by comparison.

(photo from NASA via Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)

20 Nov 2019

There’s a storm warning for Thursday and Friday and it’s coming from outer space. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center reports:

G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storms are expected on 21-22 November 2019 due to positive polarity coronal hole high speed stream influence.

SWPC NOAA Space Weather Advisory, 19 Nov 2019

In other words, there’s a potential for mild auroras and minor electrical and magnetic disruptions this week because the solar wind (“high speed stream influence”) is going to blow hard past the Earth — but not so hard that it breaks things.

The solar wind originates from the Sun’s corona, the glowing atmosphere you see behind the moon during solar eclipses. Because the corona is fluid, it develops thin spots called coronal holes that emit the Sun’s magnetic field and charged particles. Usually the particles loop out and back into the Sun (animation below) but those that don’t return come roaring off the Sun in a solar wind that travels as fast as 500 miles/second.

The Earth’s magnetic field shields us from the solar wind but its force distorts the shield (shown in blue below). Sometimes electromagnetic particles seep into our atmosphere and cause geomagnetic storms known as space weather.

Space weather messes with electronics on our satellites and increases their orbital drag. Really bad space weather — from solar flares and coronal mass ejections — disrupts our electric grid, our high frequency radio communications, and the accuracy of GPS navigation.

None of this is good so NOAA teamed up with USGS to issue a weekly Space Weather Advisory and a real time map that shows space weather’s effect in the continental U.S. and Canada. Electric power grid operators use the mapping tool to prepare their infrastructure.

Space weather causes trouble but it has one very beautiful effect. When the particles follow Earth’s magnetic field lines down to the poles they create auroras that are visible during winter darkness. Here’s a stunning one at Bear Lake, Alaska in 2005.

Fortunately this week’s space weather will be very minor, but so will the accompanying aurora. The northern lights won’t be intense nor will they be visible in the Lower 48 states.

Check NOAA’s weekly space weather forecast on Monday afternoons to see what’s coming up. See their 2-day aurora forecast or 30-minute forecast that includes Antarctica for predictions of beauty in the sky.

(images from NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, NASA’s SpacePlace and Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

Near the poles in winter there are sometimes pearly-looking clouds glowing high above the Earth.

Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), also called nacreous clouds for their pearly appearance, form in the lower stratosphere at 49,000 to 82,000 feet — 1.5 to 2.6 times higher than a jet. They’re a winter phenomenon because they only form in the presence of super low temperatures, minus 108^oF and colder.

Here you can see that they’re high above our usual clouds.

Nacreous clouds can cause trouble. Those made of water are benign but some are made of nitric acid + water that reacts with ozone in the stratosphere and creates a hole in the ozone layer. Stratospheric ozone protects Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. It’s bad to have a hole in it!

Though we’ll never see these pearly clouds in Pittsburgh, we can appreciate their beauty from afar.

p.s. The irony of ozone: Ground level ozone is bad; it burns plants and our lungs. Stratospheric ozone is good; it protects us from ultraviolet light. Ozone’s value depends on where it is.

Have you ever seen breaking waves in the sky?

These unusual clouds are called fluctus or Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds. They occur when Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is present in the atmosphere, caused by a difference in temperature and wind. The air below the clouds is moving slowly, the air above them is moving fast. Since it’s an unstable condition, the clouds soon disappear.

Last summer Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds appeared over Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia on 18 June 2019. Meteorologist Chris Michaels at WSLS 10 News explains them in the video below.

Visit this vintage blog, Making Waves, for a video that shows what happens when the waves break.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original. Video embedded from WSLS TV)

Today in Pittsburgh it’s “cloudy” but a better description would be gloomy. Gray skies are depressing. How can we cope? Let’s look at yellow.

In an ongoing international survey (6,625 people in 55 countries to date) participants are asked, “What emotions do colors represent?” The data shows that most people say yellow is joyful but this isn’t true worldwide. It’s very joyful in the United States, exceptionally joyful in Finland, but in desert regions it’s not.

Researchers led by Domicele Jonauskaite at University of Lausanne, wondered if the attitude toward yellow was cultural or environmental: “What if people’s physical surroundings affect their feelings about certain colors?” They mapped the data here. (Darkest means the greatest yellow-joy; see Finland, Iceland, New Zealand.)

They found that environment and cloud cover matter. The sun is not your friend in hot, dry, cloudless places. The study aptly named itself, “The sun is no fun without rain.”

Finland loves yellow. I think I know why. The first time I saw an intense field of yellow, like the one shown at top, was in Finland. I made my friends stop the car. So yellow! So happy! What is this plant? Rapeseed!

Rapeseed (Brassica napus) is the crop that makes canola oil.

We don’t grow rapeseed in Pittsburgh, but I found a joyful yellow patch of chrysanthemums at the corner of Forbes Avenue and South Bouquet Street.

Go find some yellow and get happy.

(rapeseed photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals. Chrysanthemums by Kate St. John)

These jelly roll clouds, called morning glories, are so rare that the only reliable place to find them is at the Gulf of Carpentaria during Australia’s spring, August to November. They form there because of Cape York Peninsula’s shape and orientation to the wind.

In photographs from above these clouds look peaceful. From the ground they are awe-inspiring, rolling across the landscape on their horizontal axis as shown in this video from Leelanau State Park, Michigan in 2016.

Morning glory clouds are extremely rare in the U.S. but I have an idea why one formed at Grand Traverse Bay. Notice the shape and orientation of the Leelanau Peninsula. It’s like Cape York on a smaller scale.

Read more about morning glories and why glider pilots love them in this vintage article: Morning Glory.

(photo and Gulf of Carpentaria map from Wikimedia Commons, video by Chad Bousamra on YouTube, Michigan map screenshot from Google Maps; click on the captions to see the originals)

22 September 2019

The ground in my neighborhood is parched dry and the leaves are wilting. It’s beginning to look like a drought in Pittsburgh. Is it so?

As of this morning Pittsburgh’s September rainfall total was 1.39 inches above normal, a statistical anomaly. We had a record rainfall event on September 1 (3.38″) and nothing to speak of since then.

If we don’t include the deluge on September 1st, precipitation is 1.9 inches below normal.

Are we in a drought? Not yet, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. It takes more than three weeks without rain to make a drought. Indicators include stream flow, ground water and soil moisture. With a year-to-date excess of 9.44 inches, our drought severity index is zero.

The weather forecast calls for showers tomorrow. I wonder if it will rain.

(photos and graph by Kate St. John, drought monitor map from droughtmonitor.unl.edu)

p.s. Click the link for a current map of the Long Term Palmer Drought Severity Index.

Strange as it looks, this fluffy white object is not a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), it’s a special cloud.

Lenticular clouds form when the wind blows horizontally toward a fixed object that forces the air to rise and fall in a wave. If the air is moist it condenses at the crest of the wave and forms lenticular clouds at the top. The diagram below shows the wind flowing over a mountain, forming two mountain-shaped waves and lenticular clouds at peaks A and B.

Despite their calm appearance, the air around these clouds is very turbulent. Glider pilots ride the updrafts on the windward side but the downdrafts are deadly for everyone. This Weather Channel video explains more.

Because we don’t have mountains, lenticular clouds are rare in Pittsburgh. You have to travel to see a mountain wearing a hat.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)