“Vorticity 6”

It’s time for another storm-chasing timelapse from photographer Mike Olbinski! “Vorticity 6” focuses on supercell thunderstorms and their tornadoes. There’s billowing turbulent convection, undulating asperitas, bulging mammatus, microbursts, and more. There’s nothing like timelapse to highlight the growth, rotation, and shear involved in these storms. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski)

Seeding Clouds With Wildfire

Raging wildfires send plumes of smoke up into the atmosphere; that smoke is made up of tiny particles that can serve as seeds — nucleation sites — where water vapor can freeze and form clouds. To understand wildfire’s effect on cloud growth, researchers sampled air from the troposphere (the atmosphere’s lowest layer) both in and around wildfire smoke.

The team found that smoke increased the number of nucleating particles up to 100 times higher than the background air, but the exact make-up of the smoke varied significantly by fire. Smoke particles were mostly organic, though inorganic ones appeared as well. The temperature of a fire, as well as what materials it was burning, made a big difference; the fire where they measured the highest particle concentrations included lots of unburned plant material, thought to be carried aloft by turbulence around the fire. (Image credit: K. Barry; research credit: K. Barry et al.; via Eos)

Effect of Atmospheric Dust on Ice Cloud Formation Confirmed
It is known that the proportion of ice-topped clouds depends on dust particles in the cloud that act as nuclei for ice crystal formation............
#aerosol #AtmosphericMineralDust #CCN #climate #cloud #Cloudformation #Earthscience #Iceclouds #MineralDust #Particulatematter #science #UmeshPrasad
Umesh Prasad

https://www.scientificeuropean.co.uk/sciences/earth-science/effect-of-atmospheric-dust-on-ice-cloud-formation-confirmed/

Penguin Poo Seeds Antarctic Clouds

Forming clouds requires more than just water vapor; every droplet in a cloud forms around a tiny aerosol particle that serves as a seed that vapor can condense onto. Without these aerosols, there are no clouds. In most regions of the world, aerosols are plentiful — produced by vegetation, dust, sea salt, and other sources. But in the Antarctic, aerosol sources are few. But a new study shows that penguins help create aerosols with their feces.

Penguin feces is ammonia-rich, and that ammonia, when combined with sulfur compounds from marine phytoplankton, triggers chemistry that releases new aerosol particles. The researchers measured ammonia carried on the wind from nearby penguin colonies and found that the birds are a large ammonia source, producing 100 to 1000 times the region’s baseline ammonia levels. In combination with another ingredient in penguin guano, the researchers found the penguins boosted aerosol production 10,000-fold. That means penguins can actually influence their environment, helping to create clouds that keep Antarctica cooler. (Image credit: H. Neufeld; research credit: M. Boyer et al.; via Eos)

“Monsoon 7”

Storm-chasing photographer Mike Olbinski (previously) returns with another stunning timelapse of summer thunderstorms in the western U.S. I never tire of watching the turbulent convection, microbursts, billowing haboobs, and undulating clouds Olbinski captures. His work is always a reminder of the incredible power and energy contained in our atmosphere and unleashed in cycles of warming and cooling, evaporation and condensation. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski)

A developing lenticular cloud advancing over a hilltop in the Patagonia region of Argentina.

#cloudformation #lenticular #patagonia #argentina #landscape #hills #mountains #nature #scenery #southamerica #AYearForArt #buyIntoArt #giftideas #wallart #artforsale @joancarroll

https://joan-carroll.pixels.com/featured/advancing-lenticular-cloud-patagonia-argentina-joan-carroll.html

Want a higher level of security & compliance for your domain management? Effectively & efficiently manage your domain names with DNSimple's Terraform Provider. Visit https://dnsimple.com/hashicorp
#cloudarchitect #cloudformation #terraform #terraformcertified #hashicorp #devops

I've probably spent 500 hours of my career on #CloudFormation templates without knowing that the #AWS CLI has a command for local validation of template correctness (like a static analyzer) before trying to create/update a stack from my mess.

It's especially good at telling me I forgot to define a resource, or typoed the name of a reference, before committing/uploading.

TIL.

```
aws cloudformation validate-template --template-body file://template.yml
```

I think I called this “Day versus Night” - taken from the ferry at dawn one morning of the well-timed cloud over Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia. #dawn #dawnphotography #day #night #landscape #landscapephotography #photography #contrast #cloudformation #weather #weatherphotography

Video - Such a very strange “straight edged cloud” came over this evening.

Such a very strange “straight edged cloud” came over this evening.

Wave Clouds in the Atacama

Striped clouds appear to converge over a mountaintop in this photo, but that’s an illusion. In reality, these clouds are parallel and periodic; it’s only the camera’s wide-angle lens that makes them appear to converge.

Wave clouds like these form when air gets pushed up and over topography, triggering an up-and-down oscillation (known as an internal wave) in the atmosphere. At the peak of the wave, cool moist air condenses water vapor into droplets that form clouds. As the air bobs back down and warms, the clouds evaporate, leaving behind a series of stripes. You can learn more about the physics behind these clouds here and here. (Image credit: Y. Beletsky; via APOD)

Updated AWS::IoT::ThingType

The AWS::IoT::ThingType resource adds two new parameters: Mqtt5Configuration, ApplicationProtocol, and PropagatingAttribute parameters.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-resource-iot-thingtype.html #iot #cloudformation

Microplastics trigger cloud formation and alter weather patterns  – Earth.com…

Microplastics have been found in some of the world’s most remote environments, from the snow-capped peaks of Mount Everest to the ocean depths of the Mariana Trench, infiltrating ecosystems and even human bodies... earth.com #microplastics #weather #cloudformation

https://formuchdeliberation.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/microplastics-trigger-cloud-formation-and-alter-weather-patterns-earth-com/

Microplastics impact cloud formation, likely affecting weather and climate
Scientists have spotted microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, in some of the most pristine environments on Earth, from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the snow on Mt. Everest to the mountaintop clouds of China and Japan. Microplastics have been detected in human brains, the bellies of sea turtles and the roots of plants.

Now, new research led by Penn State scientists reveals that microplastics in the atmosphere could be affecting weather and climate.

#microplastics #weather #climate #cloudformation

https://phys.org/news/2024-11-microplastics-impact-cloud-formation-affecting.html

Mountain ridgelines push oncoming winds up and over their peaks, creating the conditions for some spectacular condensation. If the displaced air is moist enough, it cools and condenses into a cloud that appears to hover over the peak. In reality, winds are constantly moving up and over the mountain, condensing into visible cloud where the temperature is cool enough and then morphing back to water vapor once temperatures increase. This process can create stacked lenticular clouds like those seen here. This spot in New Zealand sees lenticular clouds so often that the formation has its own name: Taieri Pet! (Image credit: satellite image – L. Dauphin, b/w – National Library; via NASA Earth Observatory)

https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2024/10/lenticular-landscape/