See Inside
One of the most beautiful phenomena in meteorology has a surprisingly subtle explanation. Its study also helps to predict the role that clouds will play in climate change
?| January 16, 2012?|
Image: Steve Jurvetson
In Brief
- Looking down on a cloud from a mountain or an airplane, sometimes you can spot a glory: rings of colored light around your shadow or the plane?s. ?
- As in a rainbow, the colors are produced by the microscopic water droplets that compose clouds, but in the case of glories the physics is more subtle.
- The light energy beamed back by a glory originates mostly from wave tunneling, which is when light rays that missed a droplet can still transfer energy into it.
- The understanding gained from glories is helping climatologists to improve models of how cloud cover may contribute to or alleviate climate change.
On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon.
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