Where in the sky the mother of pearl?

There are interrelations of the polar vortex and an unusually warm winter. But there is another correlation: between filled with cold air and a small region in the stratosphere and the troposphere over the Arctic and beautiful phenomenon of mother-of-pearl clouds.

Currently, the stratospheric polar vortex has shifted to Northern Europe. In his area there is a very low temperature (-80). It has nothing to do with surface weather, but contributes to the emergence of rare nacreous clouds.

These stratospheric clouds form at temperatures below -78. These values are inside the polar vortex at altitudes of 15 to 30 km. However, this altitude is too little moisture for ice formation. But there are tiny droplets of sulfuric acid that got there during the eruption of volcanoes. At temperatures below -78 they coagulated with water molecules and nitric acid. This mixture formed a mother-of-pearl clouds.

Usually mother-of-pearl clouds observed at high latitudes above 80 degrees latitude. But sometimes when the polar vortex shifted from its usual location, observing them in the mid-latitudes, as, for example, in these January days.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»