Even during commercial flights into the Arctic you may encounter interesting clouds as happened to me today between Edmonton and Inuvik. Both images below show a kind of mixed-phase clouds. The right one is horizontally mixed, with patchy liquid water parts ('solid' surface) and ice parts (diffuse surface). Impressive are the two optical phenomena, a sub sun and a sub sun dog which both indicate non-spherical ice crystals, most likely horizontal oriented plates.
The left images (contrast enhanced) shows an interest cloud formation. The liquid layer ('solid' surface) looks quite thin while the ice layer (diffuse surface) is very thick and mostly consists of fall streaks (virga). There must have been very efficient conditions for ice nucleation and growths while still producing liquid water at the top as the cloud did not suddenly disappeared but remained stable. Would be nice to observe such clouds also during the research flights.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen