CLOUDS!!!!!!!!

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Image result for nacreous clouds
Clouds. Are. Amazing. They. Are. Like. Pokemon! Because. There. Are. Rare. Ones. And. More. Common. Ones. And. They. Evolve. Over. Time. And. You. Can. Collect. Them. By. Learning. Their. Names. And. Spotting. The. Different. Types. In. The. Sky!
I'm going to revisit clouds in many posts in the future, I'm sure of it. Because they're just so beautiful and interesting to learn about. And the more you learn about them, the more beautiful and interesting they become. And they really are a lot like Pokemon! Maybe you'll even see clouds that are shaped like Pokemon! Or, more likely, you'll see a cloud that looks like whatever you think it looks like! I don't even like Pokemon very much and think about them only occasionally. What I do love, though, is exploring the world, seeing beautiful things, and learning about them.
So, for this blog post I'm going to talk about my current favorite cloud type which I've never seen, but perhaps one day on a future Alaskan adventure, will: NACREOUS CLOUDS.
Nacreous Clouds are also known as Polar Stratospheric Clouds because they are seen at high latitudes (Polar) and very high altitude (the atmosphere is divided into layers from lowest to highest: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere). The stratosphere, though second lowest of these layers, is really extremely high for clouds! It comprises the region of sky roughly 50,000 to 80,000 feet up in the air (for reference, commercial airplanes fly below this, at 30,000 to 40,000 feet). Normally the stratosphere is really dry, so no clouds form. But closer to the poles during wintertime, it gets so cold that whatever water exists up there condenses so you can see it (because when water is in a liquid or solid phase it reflects light and you can see it, unlike when it's a diffuse gas). These clouds are iridescent, meaning that they look like the inside of abalone shells, and are visible well before sunrise and after sunset due to their high altitude. Check out this diagram from earthsky.com to see why!
Image result for high altitude cloud reflecting light diagram


 Note that in that diagram it says "NLC visible due to reflection of sunlight". NLC is not some funny sort of way to shorten Nacreous. There's clearly no "l" in Nacreous. No, NLC stands for Noctilucent clouds! A totally different type of very high altitude cloud! They are a very recent classification and are EVEN HIGHER up than Nacreous clouds! Though they aren't iridescent, they are exquisite. I mean, look at this:
Photo of Noctilucent Clouds in Sweden taken in 2014 by Johann Enmarc

If you're interested in exploring clouds more, you may want to check out the Cloud Appreciation Society!

And a really amazing website to learn about a bunch of different clouds is: https://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/psc1.htm

 That's all for this edition of clouds. There will be more!

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