A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite observed a violent storm over the Pacific Ocean in 2018, with the temperature at the top of the cloud reaching a record low of minus 111 degrees Celsius.
A new study published jointly by British and U.S. scientists states that the satellite measured unprecedentedly low temperatures of minus 111 degrees Celsius at the top of a violent storm cloud in the Pacific Ocean, which is lower than the known “extreme cold spot” of minus 89.2 degrees Celsius in Antarctica on Earth.
A statement from Britain’s National Earth Observation Centre (NCEO) pointed out that the troposphere in the Earth’s atmosphere, its air temperature will drop with the rise in altitude, and storms or tropical cyclones in the tropics can develop up to 18 kilometers high in the air, so the top cloud temperature of these storms will become extremely low.
Satellites orbiting the Earth can observe cloud-top temperatures, and meteorologists monitor the weather in this way and use the resulting data to determine whether to issue weather warnings.
Infrared sensors on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite observed a violent storm 400 kilometers south of the Pacific island nation of Nauru on Dec. 29, 2018, that was so powerful it crossed the troposphere into the stratosphere, a phenomenon known as an overshooting cloud top. overshooting top.
Example image of the “overshooting top” phenomenon. (NASA website)
The study’s lead author, Dr. Simon Proud, a researcher at Oxford University’s National Earth Observation Centre, noted that the storm’s cloud top reached an altitude of 20.5 kilometers above sea level, and that while stratospheric temperatures warmed, cloud temperatures at the top of the storm continued to drop, measured at -111 degrees Celsius after analysis.
Prude said the phenomenon of “overshooting cloud tops” is not uncommon, and low-temperature cloud tops are normal. Generally speaking, the temperature of cloud tops that burst into the stratosphere will drop by 7 degrees Celsius for every kilometer of rise. But this storm was particularly extreme, reaching unprecedented temperatures that have broken the low-temperature limits that current satellite sensors can measure.
The researchers found that storm clouds with extreme low-temperature cloud tops are occurring with increasing frequency, and the number of extreme low-temperature cloud top storms found in the past three years has been equal to the total number of observations recorded in the past 13 years. This is important because thunderstorms with colder clouds tend to be more extreme and more hazardous to people on the ground due to hail, lightning and wind.
According to the BBC, this particular storm may have been inspired by a combination of very warm waters in the area and winds moving eastward. However, it is unclear why low-temperature storm clouds are becoming more common.
The findings were published March 22 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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