NASA’s Terra satellite was looking to document the effects of climate change on our planet’s atmosphere. Instead it captured photos of a strange phenomenon in the skies over Florida.
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00:00This is a photo taken from space, captured by NASA's Terra satellite.
00:08It's looking at the effects of climate change, specifically its impacts on our planet's
00:13atmosphere.
00:14What you're seeing here is the southern tip of Florida.
00:16However, there's a strange phenomenon hidden within this picture right here.
00:20These are what are often referred to as hole-punch clouds, or what scientists call cavum clouds,
00:25because they look like a hole was literally punched straight into the sky.
00:29They were first documented in the 1940s.
00:31But how and why they form was only discovered this century.
00:34And it turns out they're man-made.
00:36The whole phenomenon begins when an airplane moves through mid-level alto cumulus clouds.
00:41These types of clouds consist of supercooled moisture droplets.
00:44And when an aircraft bursts through one of them, it creates a cavum that grows and grows,
00:48like this.
00:49Studies have found that the shallower the angle of the aircraft, the larger the cavum cloud
00:53hole.
00:54So no extraterrestrials, unfortunately.
00:56Something they have often been mistaken for before.
00:58These cavum clouds were captured just off the west coast of the Sunshine State, near the
01:02Miami International Airport, where more than a thousand flights take off every day.
01:07Every day.
01:08Every day.