We may have a new cloud

[underpants]

PICTURES: New Cloud Type Discovered?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/photogalleries/new-cloud-pictures/photo2.html



An "asperatus" cloud rolls over New Zealand's South Island in an undated picture.

This apparently new class of clouds is still a mystery. But experts suspect asperatus clouds' choppy undersides may be due to strong winds disturbing previously stable layers of warm and cold air.

Asperatus clouds may spur the first new classification in the World Meteorological Organization's International Cloud Atlas since the 1950s, Gavin Pretor-Pinney said.

But "the tide is turning back again," in part because the humble cloud is seen as a "wild card" in climate-change prediction, Pretor-Pinney said.

LeMone agreed that clouds are a "big unknown" in climate change, mostly because climate-change models do not provide a high-enough resolution to determine what clouds' impacts will be on a changing world.
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Iowa woman's photo sparks push for new cloud type
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jr_JYe1yoQG3-SfHL7U8rYlNs4eAD98OMNBG2

"They (the clouds) were the first ones that I noted of this type and I was unsure which category to put them under," said Pretor-Pinney, author of "The Cloudspotter's Guide." "When we put pictures up online we list the category, and I wasn't sure how to categorize it."

Some scientists are skeptical. They argue that researchers who have long watched the sky haven't seen anything distinctly new for decades.

There are three main groups of clouds: cumulous, cirrus and stratus. Each has various sub-classifications built on other details of the formation.

Brant Foote, a longtime scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the clouds photographed by Wiggins already fit into the existing cumulous classification.

But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification. He proposes they be called altocumulus undulatus asperatus. The last word — Latin for roughen or agitate — is a reference to the clouds' undulating surface.

"Not necessarily gentle or steady, but quite violent-looking, turbulent, almost twisted in its appearance," he said.

The group has compiled several photographs documenting the formations from the billowy, rolling clouds shot by Wiggins in Iowa to ones from New Zealand that were much more menacing, hanging lava-like in the sky.

Foote said it would be "very unusual" for such a formation to be recognized as a new variety of cloud.

"People have been looking at clouds for hundreds of years and the general cloud classification is well defined," Foote said. "It's not as if someone discovered a new plant in the Amazon. It's what you've seen every day. There was no atmospheric condition that caused a new kind of cloud to form."

Pretor-Pinney is working with the Royal Meteorological Society in Reading, England, to prepare his case. If that group signs off, the proposal will go to the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization in Geneva.

Society executive director Paul Hardaker said a small panel within the society is gathering evidence to review. Their efforts include talking with those who took the submitted photos to determinine when, where and amid what weather they were taken. Hardaker said meteorologists tend to be skeptical of such proposals.

"We like to believe that just about everything that can be seen has been, but you do get caught once in a while with the odd, new, interesting thing," Hardaker said. "By this stage we think it's sufficiently interesting to explore it further and we're optimistic about the information we've got."

[Bluebear]

1. Doesn't that NZ photo look sinister?

:scared:

[timeforpeace]

2. Yeah, right. Like he would know.

Brant Foote, a longtime scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the clouds photographed by Wiggins already fit into the existing cumulous classification.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Name suggestion: "Apococloud"

[kestrel91316]

4. That first pic is TOO WEIRD. If I saw skies like that, I'd either

run screaming, or start looking for a burning bush........

And I've even seen the dirty green cottonball underside of tornado producing clouds........

[arcadian]

5. My favorite cloud type that nobody has ever heard of? Lenticular.

[cloudbase]

8. Very well known in the soaring community.

That's where the wave is.

[arcadian]

9. Paragliders?

Cool

[cloudbase]

10. Traditional sailplanes,

like this one.



Altitudes in excess of 25,000 ft. are attainable if the wave is working right. The lenticular cloud is a 'marker' of wave, just as tall cumulus clouds or circling birds are markers of thermal lift.

[Deja Q]

6. Don't cast out that asparagus, what is it really called?

:evilgrin:

[Tuesday Afternoon]

7. cool.

:o

I like herringbone


and the lenticular is cool