by Playfuls Staff |
5th May 2007
U.S. and Israeli researchers say there is a "twilight zone" between clouds and the sun made of particles that are [more] neither wet nor dry.
Scientists from Israel's Weizmann Institute and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., say up to 60 percent of the atmosphere labeled as cloud-free in satellite observations is actually filled with this twilight zone of in-between particles.
"With the highly sensitive Earth-observing instruments NASA has used since 2000, we can distinguish aerosols and clouds in greater detail than ever before," said Goddard's Lorraine Remer in a release. "But the area around clouds has given us trouble. The instruments detected something there, but it didn't match our understanding of what a cloud or an aerosol looked like."
Remer said it appears to be a "transitional zone where clouds are beginning to form or are dying away, and where humidity causes dry particles to absorb water and get bigger."
The researchers say this twilight zone could lead climate scientists to recalculate their best estimates of how Earth's atmosphere holds and reflects solar energy.
© 2007 UPI
