![]() ![]() In 2002, for example, various sensing instruments detected 17 distinct pyrocumulonimbus events in North America alone. "Our paper also shows that pyroCbs happen more often than people realize," Yue added. SAGE II was launched in 1984 and turned off in 2005. Yue reevaluated data he'd analyzed years earlier from NASA Langley's SAGE II instrument on the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite. ![]() "At the time, the thinking was that it was unlikely," said Yue. The tropopause is the barrier between the lower atmosphere and stratosphere. One reason for the misinterpretation, Yue said, is that scientists believed nothing less energetic than a volcanic eruption could penetrate Earth's "tropopause" in so short a period of time. The plume thought to have been from Pinatubo was, it turns out, from a pyrocumulonimbus storm in Canada. Three "mystery cloud phenomena" were cited as examples that were actually the result of pyrocumulonimbus storms, including one initially attributed to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The paper reevaluates previous data to conclude that many stratospheric pollution events erroneously have been attributed to particles from volcanic eruptions. Credit: New South Wales Rural Fire Service The cloud's strong winds caused the fires toĮxplode into the Australian city. Yue is one of eight authors of a paper on pyrocumulonimbus in the September 2010 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) titled "The Untold Story of Pyrocumulonimbus."Ī pyrocumulonimbus cloud towers over thick smoke from fires burning near Canberra, Australia, in 2003. Yue, an atmospheric scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "An individual pyroCb can inject particles into the lower stratosphere as high as 10 miles," says Dr. They also suggest pyroCbs happen more often than thought, and say they're responsible for a huge volume of pollutants trapped in the upper atmosphere. Researchers believe these intense storms may be the source of what previously was believed to have been volcanic particles in the stratosphere. And in the process, "pyroCb" storms funnel their smoke like a chimney into Earth's stratosphere, with lingering ill effects. Credit: Naval Research Lab/Mike FrommĪ cumulonimbus without the "pyre" part is imposing enough - a massive, anvil-shaped tower of power reaching five miles (8 km) high, hurling thunderbolts, wind and rain.Īdd smoke and fire to the mix and you have pyrocumulonimbus, an explosive storm cloud actually created by the smoke and heat from fire, and which can ravage tens of thousands of acres. Pollutants from these storms are funneled into the stratosphere.
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