What's Going On With These Weird Ripply Clouds?

What's Going On With These Weird Ripply Clouds?
www.iflscience.com...


NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this natural-color image on February 2, 2017

This time, the agency snapped a photograph of some dramatically parting clouds between the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. A British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean, they’re extremely remote and prone to volcanic eruptions and penguin occupation.

But what is the ripple-like witchcraft happening with the clouds, we hear you ask. Well that, dear readers, is due to a fluid dynamics phenomenon known as a “gravity wave”.

Say you’ve got two fluids, two materials that are mobile and compressible, but with different densities. When the two are in a state of equilibrium of balance, they are motionless.

However, when the system is upset – perhaps due to the chaotic nature of how they are moving against each other or due to local density changes – things fall out of equilibrium and inertial forces attempt to restore the balance...

The motion of the wind on the sea, for example, creates surface waves. This, of course, is the image we normally associate with the word “wave”, which is the sloshing about of the water as the air above tries to reach equilibrium. Water isn’t the only place you get waves, though – any fluid can feature them.

In the case of NASA’s latest satellite image, we have the cloud and the air around it as the two fluids. As the air flowed over the islands, it bunches up and stretches out, causing crests and troughs in the local atmosphere.

As the clouds were present, these crests and troughs became visible to NASA’s satellite peering down from above. So there you have it!

Now this is something pretty cool! Imagine seeing this cloud formation above your head and wonder WTH is going on in the sky? You may think HAARP or alien witchcraft, but if you were a scientific observer you may take notes down and explore weather patterns.

So skywatchers, sky gaze away!

You say gravity waves...others might say its Trump's fault

Not to be picky but those clouds arent "dramatically parting" in my opinion. I call fake news on this one.

a reply to: Skywatcher2011
Here's a more dramatic example:
www.atmos.washington.edu...

Imagine seeing this cloud formation above your head and wonder WTH is going on in the sky?

What they look like from the ground varies. But they are usually dramatic.
www.google.com...


Sailplane pilots like to get up close and personal with them.
www.google.com...

a reply to: six67seven

Wow, even a thread about clouds isn't safe from politics.

The clouds parting around an Island mountain, like a boat makes a wake on water or...

a bullet in flight parting the air:

and the earths magnetic field parting the solar wind:

originally posted by: ausername
a reply to: six67seven

Wow, even a thread about clouds isn't safe from politics.

thats the kind of climate ATS cultivates and profits from.

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nice clouds...

a reply to: Phage

Thanks for the posting Phage!

a reply to: Phage

That's beautiful! (Not an educational or scientific contribution from me I know, but still. The ground view is breathtaking!)

Peace.

a reply to: Skywatcher2011

It's the Russians at it again.

a reply to: AtypicalJ

Nah.
Didn't you get the memo from Bannon? Russia is cool. It's China.

(Don't blame me for the politics)

From Phage's first link - Christmas Clouds!!



Thank you for the thread, and to all contributors so far - very cool stuff.

No thanks to the political trolling thread derailer though. Why try to ruin a good thing? Just have to be "that guy" who feels the need to infect even the most unrelated thread with politics?