cloud tube

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Cloud tube

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With the end of the dry season in Australia, returns the time of morning glory clouds. We see the photograph above, the clouds are shaped tube. They can reach a mile high and a mile long.

This cloud band moves into the Gulf of Carpentaria at the speed of 60 kilometers per hour, to the delight of surfers and hang gliders, parachutists.

The phenomenon remains partly unexplained. The morning glory clouds are born in the York Peninsula, held at atmospheric pressure conditions where special Gulf sea breezes and ocean converge on the land.

Cooling of the warm moist air generated in altitude, a band of clouds along the peninsula, which explains that the tube can have a length of 1000 km. The different cooling conditions explain the formation of thin clouds in parallel lanes.

The cloud band moves like a solitary wave over long distances without deformation and bearing characteristics. At night the land breeze pushes the rolls of clouds to the south-west along the Gulf of Carpentaria. When the air is fairly stable over the Gulf, the band of cloud not collapsing and the early morning and these spectacular clouds are visible. Hence the name of morning glory clouds.

The phenomenon of tubes of clouds is called soliton. The same is at stake when bores or rogue waves batter on ships. This is one of the topics covered in the Science for October.