Dull cool day and blog, book-ended by a nice sunrise and a nice sunset

Here we go…..some pretty, but also dull,  photos, along with some novella-sized captions as mind wandered into the obtuse while writing them.

6:44 AM. Nice sunrise due to Altostratus/Cirrus ice clouds.
6:44 AM. Nice sunrise due to Altostratus/Cirrus ice clouds.
2:00 PM. Stratocumulus topped Samaniego Ridge most all day, but was too warm to have ice, and droplets too small to collide, stick together, and form misty drizzle. Misty drizzle? Could be a great name for a late night female vocalist.
2:00 PM. Kind of a dull day yesterday, kind of like this blog.  Stratocumulus (Sc) clouds  topped Samaniego Ridge most of the day, below that gray Altostratus ice cloud layer.   But those Sc clouds were too warm to have ice in them, and droplets were  too small to collide, stick together, and form misty drizzle.  Have to get to at least 30 microns in  diameter before they stick to one another.  Misty drizzle?  Could be a great name for a late night female vocalist doing earthy songs like Earthy Kitt back in the ’50s.  “Earthy” was much hotter than global warming.
3:29 PM. An Altostratus translucidus mostly ice-cloud with a dark patch of Altocumulus droplet cloud blocking the sun. If you look closely, you can see a that there's this Altotratus layer may be topped by a Altocumulus perlucidus droplet cloud layer. Yes, droplet clouds at the top of As where the temperature is lowest? Yep, happens all the time, up to about -30 --35 C. Been there, done that, in aircraft research.
3:29 PM. An Altostratus translucidus to opacus,  mostly ice-cloud with a dark patch of Altocumulus droplet cloud blocking the sun. If you look closely, (upper center) you can see a that there’s this Altotratus layer may be topped by a Altocumulus perlucidus droplet cloud layer. Yes, droplet clouds at the top of As where the temperature is lowest? Yep, this counter-intuitive finding happens all the time, up to about -30 C -35 C. Been there, measured that;  in aircraft research.  Ma Nature likes to form a drop and have it freeze before forming an ice crystal directly from the water vapor.
4:40 PM.
4:40 PM, shot taken as we entered a local restaurant.  You’ve got your two layers of Altocumulus, with some Altostratus translucidus above those, filling in the gaps.  Gaps?  Huh.  I am reminded that I have a failed manuscript about “gaps”, these kind;  Cloud Seeding and the Journal Barriers to Faulty Claims:  Closing the Gaps., rejected by the Bull.  Amer. Meteor. Soc. way back in ’99.   It was an instruction manual,  in a sense,  about how to prevent all the bogus cloud seeding literature that got published in the 1960s through 1980s, and was not only published, but cited by our highest national panels and experts, like the National  Academy of Sciences.   Amazing, but true.  I give examples.   You can read about this chapter of  science in Cotton and Pielke, 2007, “Human Impacts on Weather and Climate”, Cambridge U. Press, a highly recommended book.  That cloud seeding distortion of cloud seeding science was due to many factors, of which perhaps the primary one was, “nobody ever got a job saying cloud seeding doesn’t work1.”  This was a great segue.  Of course, we have similar stresses on those researchers looking for effects of global warming nee “climate change” now days.  Nobody will ever get a job (a renewed grant) saying they can’t  find evidence of global warming, “Can I have some more of that money to keep looking?”  And beware the “Ides of March” if you criticize published work in that domain!  Think of poor Judy C , a heroine to me, and how she’s been vilified for questioning climate things.

 

DSC_0076
5:29 PM, took leave from Indian food there in R Vistoso for this.  Its not just anyone who would excuse himself from dinner to do something other than visit the laboratory.

That’s about it.  No use talking about the rain ahead again.  Seems to be a couple chances between the 20th and the 30th.

The End

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1You can make a cloud snow a little by seeding it with dry ice or silver iodide.  This has been shown since the earliest days of experiments.  Below, to demonstrate this, an aircraft inadvertently “seeded” this Altocumulus cloud layer.   However, whether the small amount that falls out from previously non-precipitating clouds is economically viable is not known.   Increasing  precipitation due to seeding when the clouds are already snowing/raining  has not been satisfactorily proven.  As prize-winning stat man, Jerzy Neyman,  U of Cal Berkeley Golden Bears Stat Lab would tell you, you need a randomized experiment and followed by a second one that confirms the original results, with measurements made by those who have no idea what days are seeded and evaluations done by those who have no vested interest in cloud seeding.   Wow there’s a lot of boring information here.  Getting a little worked up here, too.

Ice canal in supercooled Altocumulus clouds, bases -23 C, tops -25 C (from PIREPS).
Ice canal in supercooled Altocumulus clouds over Seattle, bases -23 C, tops -25 C (from PIREPS).  Photo by the Arthur.

By Art Rangno

Retiree from a group specializing in airborne measurements of clouds and aerosols at the University of Washington (Cloud and Aerosol Research Group). The projects in which I participated were in many countries; from the Arctic to Brazil, from the Marshall Islands to South Africa.