Meteors can create glowing clouds

Smoke from supernovae may be the cause of the glowing clouds on the earth's upper atmosphere.

>>>The cloud glows

Noctilucent clouds (glowing at night) appear at a height of about 76 to 85km or more above the two polar regions in the summer months. Unlike white clouds near the surface of the earth, noctilucent clouds are bright blue because they contain tiny crystals.

A glowing cloud in Canada's sky in May. (Photo: National Geographic)

James Russell, an atmospheric researcher at Hampton University in Virginia, USA - and colleagues used photos taken by the AIM satellite of the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) over the past five years to find out. Chemical composition of ice crystals from luminous clouds. The team of meteor smoke detectors accounts for 3% of the mass of each crystal particle, National Geographic reported.

The number of noctilucent clouds and their frequency in the sky increased markedly over the years, Russell said.

'The upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere is changing in ways that we cannot fully understand. Noctilucent clouds not only appear more but their brightness also increases and they also appear closer to the equator than before. I suspect that methane has caused those trends , 'Russell said.

Sources of methane emissions include cattle, people, garbage, fuel refineries. Methane is not only a greenhouse gas, but also increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere as it flies to the top of the ozone layer - about 100km from the Earth's surface.

Due to the effects of methane, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has increased by 15% over the past 30 years, while the brightness of the cloud has increased from 20 to 30%, the frequency of occurrence increased 5 times.