Space Weather Revisited

I'm a meteorologist and currently I'm researching some of the chemical aspects behind air quality. I know that sounds very vague but more well be developing over the summer and much into my next school year. I'm really fascinated by weather that occurs within the Troposphere and in the Stratosphere. Tornadoes, hurricanes, thunderstorms, they amongst many other weather occurrences are spectacular phenomenons. They however, can be very deadly and finding out ways to better educate the public on them is something I like to do too.

I also am really fascinated by the weather that occurs in Thermosphere, Ionosphere and beyond. A good example of this, is the Aurora Borealis. This phenomena is actually one of my favorite weather phenomenons, though you may be thinking that's not a tornado or weather we are more likely to see everyday. You may even be thinking the Aurora Borealis, is not even weather. Although it is not within the planetary atmosphere of the Earth, the Troposphere and Stratosphere, the Aurora is due to a change in the atmosphere. This is much like the weather we see closer to Earth. Our weather changes due to changes in the atmosphere and other atmospheric processes.

The term for weather like the Aurora Borealis is called Space Weather and currently Space Weather is a very growing field. I have been to a few conferences including the 33rd Annual National Weather Association conference in Louisville, KY, the 90th Annual American Meteorological Society conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and the 91st Annual American Meteorological Society conference in Seattle, Washington, and at all of those conferences, there have been presentations on Space Weather.

I saw a picture on a CNN News Blog and was motivated to write this entry. Here's the picture below:

source

The picture is of the Southern Lights taken by a member of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Atlantis recently launched on July 8, and marked the final mission of NASA's 30 year Space Shuttle Program. Isn't it spectacular?

The Aurora Borealis is a very well known space weather phenomenon, in what may sound reminiscent of my July 20, 2009, a few others include solar flares, meteor showers and solar flares and I'll add a new one coronal holes.

As mentioned in the post, only one ground phenomenon that can propagate into outer space and that is a lightning. What is created is called a blue jet. Here is a picture from Wikipedia showing this phenomenon in more detail:


According to Wikipedia, blue jets can reach to "the lowest levels of the ionosphere 25 miles (40 km) to 50 miles (80 km) above the Earth."

So if you see on my blog, postings about hurricanes, or solar flares, I'm just posting about weather near and far :-)

To learn more about Space Weather visit this link.

Bonus!

Now this is much more astronomy, but here's a picture I posted to my Flickr, of the full moon taken by my friend Drew, on July 16. It was with my Casio Exilm EX-277. I was really surprised at how well, he got this shot of the moon. It is a tad blurry, though. Haha.