Researchers seem to be satisfied with all their findings about the clouds and the sun and their mutual links and contributions towards the environment. They are now trying to go a step forward trying to find out, whats happening up there in between the clouds and the sun.

To the surprise of both the scientists in U.S. and Israeli, they have discovered a in the area between clouds and the sun, which are said to be made of particles that are ‘neither wet nor dry’.

The 60 percent of the atmosphere labeled as cloud-free, is actually found to be filled with this twilight zone of in-between particles, as been observed by satellites. Thanks to the researchers from Israel’s Weizmann Institute and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Goddard’s Lorraine Remer in a release said,

With the highly sensitive Earth-observing instruments NASA has used since 2000, we can distinguish aerosols and clouds in greater detail than ever before.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.

Trying to explain the zone, Remer addresses this as a could be transitional zone.

It is perhaps where; the clouds that begin to form die away. It is here the humidity may cause dry particles to absorb water and get bigger.

Though the scientists are yet to go far with their research to confirm on it, the climate researchers have already realized that the twilight zone would surely lead them recalculate their best estimates of how Earth’s atmosphere not only holds, but also reflects solar energy.


Photo: met.utah.edu. Posted by: Irani    Source

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