Buzz
Weather has long been a source of humor and wit. Mark Twain once said that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was his attempt to write a novel without mentioning weather. Comedian George Carlin humorously declared that the ‘weather forecast for tonight’ could be summed up in one word: ‘dark.’ Meanwhile, writer Charles Dudley Warner remarked that ‘everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.’
Despite the humor surrounding it, weather — the result of wind and sun, at least on Earth — is crucial to our survival and well-being. So much so that it is taken seriously by farmers, scientists, and nearly everyone else, prompting the development of an entire field of study, meteorology, dedicated to understanding it.
While we often assume that we know all there is to know about weather, new meteorological and weather-related phenomena do emerge. As this list demonstrates, some are truly extraordinary, and a few are even out of this world. Recent discoveries include new cloud types, powerful new storms, a strange optical effect, an unexpected cause of droughts, the ‘fuel’ behind hurricanes, the impact of solar flares on magnetic fields, the discovery of space hurricanes, the mysterious Green Ghost, an unusual source of antimatter, and ‘something entirely different.’
10. Mammatus Clouds
Although first observed in the early 20th century, mammatus clouds were only officially recognized by the World Meteorological Organization in its 2017 update to The International Cloud Atlas.
Mammatus clouds, named after their resemblance to cows' udders, form in an inverted fashion, hanging from the underside of cirrocumulus, altostratus, altocumulus, and stratocumulus clouds. While many associate them with the arrival of a tornado, they don't always signal severe weather, despite often appearing during thunderstorms.
These clouds form when cool, moist air descends into warmer, drier air. If the moisture is made up of large water droplets or snow crystals, the clouds tend to persist longer, as the vapor evaporates more slowly due to the greater amount of moisture. There’s no mistaking them — their appearance is strikingly unique, even a bit eerie.
9. Steve
What’s purple, stretches across the sky like a vast unraveling ribbon, and could potentially be a new type of aurora?
A group of amateur meteorologists known as The Aurora Chasers, who were the first to observe the phenomenon, named it Steve, inspired by the name given to an unknown creature in the movie Over the Hedge by the children.
Eric Donovan, a professor at the University of Calgary, became intrigued by the Aurora Chasers’ discovery. He quickly realized that their initial assumption, that Steve was a proton aurora, was incorrect because proton auroras are invisible, as they are ‘typically too dark to be seen.’ Donovan discovered that ‘as [a] satellite flew directly through Steve, data from an electric field instrument showed significant changes,’ including a temperature increase at an altitude of ‘300 km (186 miles) above Earth’s surface.’ The atmosphere heated by ‘3000 degrees Celsius (5432 degrees Fahrenheit)’ and a ‘25 km-wide (15 mile) ribbon of gas flowed westward at approximately 6 km/s, compared to a speed of about 10 m/s on either side of the ribbon.’
Contrary to initial beliefs, Steve turned out to be much more common than first thought. In fact, it had been ‘very common,’ though it had gone unnoticed until The Aurora Chasers discovered it. One of the amateur scientists suggested that the name ‘Steve,’ as an acronym, aptly describes its origin: ‘Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.’ However, Donovan and his colleague Bea Gallardo-Lacour were still uncertain about its cause, although they intended to publish their findings after further research.
It turned out to be fortunate that Donovan and Gallardo-Lacour didn’t rush into a premature theory about Steve’s origin, because their subsequent research revealed that Steve wasn’t an aurora after all. Unlike auroras, which are caused by ‘showers of rain [from] Earth’s upper atmosphere,’ Steve is a ‘kind of skyglow.’ Its source remains unknown, which makes the light in the night sky ‘a new type of optical phenomenon,’ according to Donovan and Gallardo-Lacour. Their next step is to determine whether Steve is the result of events in the ionosphere or at a higher altitude in Earth’s atmosphere.
8. Stormquakes
As the name implies, stormquakes are a newly identified geophysical phenomenon caused by the immense forces of Earth's weather systems.
Intense storms like hurricanes can create vibrations in the ocean floor. These stormquakes can be as powerful as minor earthquakes (around on the Richter scale). Wenyuan Fuan, an assistant professor at Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, and his research team discovered that powerful storms transfer some of their massive energy to the Earth’s crust via the waves they generate. This energy leads to ‘intense seismic source activity’ that can last anywhere from hours to days.
Fuan and his team discovered that more than 10,000 stormquakes occurred along the ocean floor, particularly near the edges of the world’s continental shelves, including regions off New England, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and British Columbia.
7. Landfalling Droughts
Landfalling droughts begin over the ocean but move onto land, creating conditions that are often ‘larger and drier’ than those caused by other types of drought. Their discovery has given meteorologists hope that these droughts can be predicted with the same certainty as daily weather forecasts. Stanford University scientists believe this is a likely development, which is promising since one in every six droughts that occurred between 1981 and 2018 were landfalling droughts.
Droughts bring a wide range of issues, including crop failure, reduced water supply, decreased electricity production, negative impacts on trade and ecosystems, population displacement, and billions of dollars in losses. The team’s discovery that landfalling droughts occur in areas with ‘atmospheric pressure patterns’ that exacerbate arid conditions could help meteorologists track their ‘migration’ toward land, typically over the course of months. This could provide ‘advance warning’ and allow for some protective measures against the effects of these phenomena.
6. Surfactants' Impact on Sea Spray
A recently discovered meteorological phenomenon could potentially help forecasters predict hurricanes earlier. A study by a research team from Nova Southeastern University’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center identifies two issues that hinder hurricane predictions: the rapid intensification and weakening of these storms.
One of the authors of the paper, Breanna Vanderplow, a Ph.D. student at NSU Halmos College, explained that when environmental conditions are right, surface-active biological materials like coral reefs, and anthropogenic materials such as oil spills, can increase the distribution of sea spray, acting as a kind of ‘fuel’ for hurricanes, thereby intensifying the storms and their impacts.
Alexander Soloviev, Ph.D., a professor and principal investigator at NSU’s Halmos College’s Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, described how surfactants, both biological and anthropogenic, contribute to these changes in hurricanes: ‘Surfactants reduce interfacial tension between air and water, resulting in a higher rate of sea spray production. . . . Evaporating sea spray is part of tropical cyclone thermodynamics. Spray particles also create additional resistance to airflow as they increase the total surface area exposed to the wind.’
Before the team uncovered the influence of surfactants on hurricane intensification, it was thought that these materials only impacted the thermodynamics of tropical cyclones. ‘Breanna has identified a new phenomenon that could enhance hurricane intensity forecasts,’ said Soloviev.
5. Solar Flare Phenomenon
Weather is not exclusive to Earth; other planets experience it as well, and weather even occurs in space. In fact, much of the weather throughout the solar system is driven by the sun's energy.
Current 3-D models of solar flares suggest that they form in ‘distorted’ areas of the sun's magnetic field. Within these regions, the magnetic fields create loops that ‘slip and flip around one another,’ reconnecting in the process. As this happens, new magnetic structures emerge, and magnetic energy builds until it is released, causing the loops, or field lines, to ‘straighten’ and return to their previous ‘lower energy states.’
The eruptions, known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), release vast amounts of magnetic energy into space. With the 3-D model of solar flares now validated, scientists can better predict when solar flares will occur. This ability is expected to safeguard technology, aircraft, satellites, infrastructure, and even Earth itself from the devastating effects of ‘space weather.’
Dr. Jaroslav Dudik, a Royal Society Newton International Fellow at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Mathematical Sciences, reflected on the impact of understanding the solar flare phenomenon, emphasizing its potential benefits: 'Human civilization is nowadays maintained by technology, and that technology is vulnerable to space weather.'
4. Space Hurricanes
Far above Earth's polar regions, plasma vortexes spin in ways similar to hurricanes. However, these hurricanes aren't exclusive to Earth—they also form on other planets within the solar system and across the wider universe.
As particles rise or fall, they create low-pressure zones, which often lead to the formation of hurricanes. Just as tropical storms develop in Earth’s lower atmosphere, space hurricanes form around electrically charged particles in the ionosphere. These space hurricanes are significantly larger than those on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system; plasma swirling at altitudes of hundreds of kilometers above Earth's North Pole has been observed to span 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) across. Electrons, accelerating away from these plasma storms, travel toward Earth, 'enhancing the northern lights,' which also take on a cyclonic shape.
Scientists suggest that the calm before the storm might actually trigger space hurricanes. When Earth's magnetosphere is inactive, the magnetic field lines stay undisturbed, allowing electrical particles from the solar wind to funnel into the upper and middle atmosphere. These solar storms, created by this funneling, can disrupt satellite communications. Additionally, the continuous flow of solar particles gradually erodes technology, even when space weather remains relatively calm.
3. “A Whole Different Thing”
Saturn’s weather has given rise to a peculiar and intriguing phenomenon: the Great White Spot, a massive storm that “raged near the planet’s north pole in 2018.” This marks the third distinct type of storm observed on the gas giant. Two other storm types include smaller, 2,000-kilometer (about 1,250 miles) wide storms, which appear as “bright clouds” and last just a few days. The Great White Spots are much larger, stretching ten times the size of these smaller storms and lasting for months. The cause of all three storm types is believed to be the same: clouds of water vapor that lie “hundreds of kilometers below the planet’s upper cloud layer.”
The newly identified storm type on Saturn remains shrouded in mystery. While it’s unclear how much lightning it produces or how it forms, some astronomers suggest that it might be a remnant of a “failed Great White Spot.” However, planetary scientist Robert West remains skeptical of this theory. According to West, the gases that fuel the Great White Spots on Saturn’s surface rarely mix, making this new storm type unlikely to be a failed Great White Spot. Instead, he proposes that it is “a whole different thing,” the true origin of which remains unknown for the time being.
2. Antimatter
Thunderstorms generate more energy than previously understood. In the mid-1990s, scientists discovered that lightning and the electrical fields created above thunderstorms produce gamma radiation, detectable from space. These gamma-ray flashes (GRFs) occur across the globe, as many as five-hundred times per day. But that’s not all thunderstorms produce. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has uncovered additional phenomena, previously undetected: the tops of thunderstorms also emit antimatter beams!
The antimatter beams pack a powerful punch, carrying 511 keV of energy, which is the equivalent of an electron-positron annihilation event. Scientists explain that under certain conditions, the strong electrical fields that form at the tops of thunderstorms can create an inverted ‘avalanche of electrons’ moving at nearly the speed of light. When these accelerated electrons collide with air molecules, they emit high-energy gamma rays, called TGFs, which activate the telescope’s sensors.
1. Green Ghost
Transient luminous events are phenomena that manifest above thunderstorms, often with unusual and whimsical names like sprites, trolls, elves, and pixies. In 2020, Thomas Ashcraft identified a new type of such event: the Green Ghost. He captured footage of two of these mysterious occurrences above west Texas and observed that they were triggered by intense lightning strokes with strong peak currents.
While Ashcraft was one of the few to witness this strange phenomenon, he wasn’t the first. That distinction goes to Hank Schyma, a Houston-based storm chaser known as Pecos Hawk. Reviewing his footage taken in Oklahoma, Schyma saw a ‘green afterglow’ above some larger sprites. He and fellow storm chaser Paul M. Smith shared their video with scientists, many of whom initially dismissed it as merely a camera sensor artifact. However, as Schyma and Smith continued to capture more footage of the phenomenon, and as more scientists examined it, the belief in the reality of the Green Ghosts grew stronger.
Although the exact cause of the Green Ghosts remains unknown, their color could provide a clue. Auroras and airglow often appear green due to the excitation of oxygen molecules. It’s possible that the same process is behind the colors of the Green Ghosts, which is how they got their name. At the very least, this unusual phenomenon serves as a reminder that, even after thousands of years of study, the mysteries of weather and its related effects are far from fully understood.
