Mar 10 1982
From The Space Library
The Observatory for Geophysical Monitoring of Climatic Change at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, on March 3 said that scientists doing a routine weather scan had discovered a huge cloud orbiting the Earth and had tracked it for five weeks, but could not explain what it was. The cloud, about 10 to 12 miles high (just above the flight paths of most commercial jets), had probably circled the Earth four or five times. The best guess was that it resulted from an unnoticed volcanic eruption.
On March 10 NASA said that the "mystery cloud" detected over Hawaii definitely came from a volcanic eruption. Chemical analysis of samples showed that it consisted entirely of sulfuric acid, ruling out nuclear explosion or a meteorite, either of which would have produced fragments of rocky material. The cloud had been measured from the equator to Germany, about 50-f8-N, with the heaviest concentration of particles found by a Langley Research Center (LaRC) research aircraft at 20°N.
No volcanic source for the cloud had been identified. Scientists from ARC were studying atmosphere-circulation patterns to see how gas from an equatorial source could spread over the northern half of the Earth. Sulfur gases injected into the stratosphere by volcanic eruptions tended to remain for months, as there would be no rain to remove them; changing gradually into drops of sulfuric acid, the volcanic cloud would increase over time in depth and density as more sulfur compounds arrived. Highly reflective clouds of the acid, like those on Venus, could prevent solar heat from reaching the ground, but the current cloud apparently had not produced. any climate changes.
A NASA research plane flying from Wallops Flight Center (WFC) to Costa Rica carried a remote-sensing laser radar that mapped the cloud content while doing previously scheduled data-gathering on local volcanoes. LaRC would continue taking radar data; also, an ARC U-2 aircraft would make follow-on flights beginning March 23. (ARC Release 82-11; LaRC Release 82-12; NASA Release 82-45; W Post, Mar 6/82, A-4; NY Times, Mar 7/82, P-24)
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