12 Dec 2016

Cold Arctic

See http://www.spaceweather.com/ .

The Space Weather website has some great images of stratospheric polar clouds saying the Arctic Circle is getting very cold.

Mesospheric clouds (higher than the stratosphere) are often associated with 6m DX from Europe to Japan. I don't know if such propagation is possible at this time of year. These openings are usually in late June, I think.

I don't know if stratospheric clouds reflect radio waves as do mesospheric clouds.

See https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/atmosphere-layers2.html for details of atmospheric layers.

1 comment:

Hugh said...

Interesting, but I rather doubt it. Polar mesospheric clouds are MUCH higher than normal stratospheric clouds, and quite close to the thin atomic sodium and iron layers (formed from varporised micrometorites), which is thought to "coat" the ice with a slightly conductive layer through crypumping action. Without these coatings, I am guessing these lower ice clouds are not reflective enough. G6AIG Hugh.