Looking at Clouds

courtesy of Joe Brown Digital Photography

Blending the elements of water and air into texture and form, clouds can seem as much a process of the imagination as they are one of nature.  When looking at the shifting shapes of cumulus clouds, I often wonder, am I seeing a reflection of my hopes or my fears?  Is this a heart I see heralding good things to come, or is it a horned face of a devil warning of future woes?  But such musings are as ephemeral as the clouds themselves, and my mind soon turns another kind of wonder, the workings of our atmosphere.

NASA Image

In meteorology, clouds are classified by form  -- wispy cirrus, blanketing stratus and billowy cumulus, and by height -- low, middle and high. Some clouds simply adorn the sky, while others portend precipitation.  The word nimbus is added to the rain-makers; cumulonimbus clouds, more commonly known as thunderheads, can rise to great heights and bring the most extreme weather.   In combination, there are dozens of sub types of clouds, and truly, to the eye, each formation seems as unique as the crystal lattices of snowflakes.


That clouds are composed of gaseous water vapor is a common misunderstanding.  They are actually made of tiny droplets of liquid water, falling ever-so-slowly back to earth.  The height of the clouds is the place where those droplets evaporate back into gas as they fall.  If that happens to be at the surface it is commonly called fog.  Clouds blossom when the atmospheric conditions are such that more droplets are created through the condensation of water vapor than are lost to evaporation.

NASA Image

This blossoming would not be possible without the wondrous property of water to absorb and give off large amounts of energy when it changes from one state of matter to another.  The energy is locked into the molecules of water themselves, and for that reason, it is referred to as latent 'hidden' heat.  This phenomenon is why sweating helps us shed heat -- when the perspiration on our skin evaporates it draws the heat from our skin, causing a cooling effect.  In contrast, when water vapor in the air condenses into tiny water droplets, that stored 'latent' energy is released and results in clouds and storms.


Next time you look up at the clouds, stop for a moment and wonder.  No matter how one looks at them, whether through the spark of imagination or scientific fascination, clouds are truly a phenomena worthy of our musings.

The Feel of Early Spring

by Glen Tepke

Early spring is a sensual experience of the grandest scale. As the days grow longer, there is a feeling of change in the air. In northern climes, the sun begins to warm your skin despite the winter chill that remains.  Most everywhere, the beginning of spring is marked by the natural alterations of the ecology -- the budding of trees, the early flowers breaking through the ground, the sound of birds singing, even the changing smells of the land. Spring is simply one of the great wonders of nature, and it is made possible by the incredible interplay between the earth and sun.

Yachaks  in Ecuador

Spring is indeed an experience of the senses, intimately linked to our sense of self as well our communal spirit.  From Easter celebrations to druidic rituals, all cultures, in one way or another, have imbued the dynamic arc of the sun across the sky with purpose and meaning.

NASA Image Earth and Sun

It is a time when days turn longer than night -- a central moment in all solar calendars. The relationship between sun and earth governs the amount of solar energy any given place receives, and in turn, the sunshine waxes, nudging the patterns of clouds, wind and rain towards nourishment. Spring is a time of blossom, of planting crops, and of new life.





The vernal equinox inspires feelings of renewal and rebirth for the land -- it does for us as well. It is a time to reexamine our lives, to clean and purge ourselves of the old and make room for the new.  It is a time for spring cleaning.

Watch the Sun Erupts in a Rain of Fire

Witness the spectacular display of a solar eruption.

Allow yourself to imagine the scale of it.

Experience the power of nature

and know yourself in it.

A revelation.

 

NASA | Fiery Looping Rain on the Sun

SOHO Image of a Solar Prominence

Read my blog on A Coming Storm of Light

The Emergence of Birds in the Sky and Such

Image from Physics World

Have you ever watched a large flock of  birds create beautiful patterns in the sky and wondered how it all works? Curiously, there seems to be no time lag between the movements of each individual. How does each bird know when to turn and where to go?

People have wondered about this perplexing behavior for centuries.  Perhaps, as the ancient Romans thought, it is an expression of the will of the Gods.  Early scientists could not fathom the reason for such coordination, and some even suggested some kind of natural telepathy could explain this phenomenon.  Recent studies using high-speed cameras and computational models suggest that it is all due to the simple behaviors of individuals.  Yet, even these studies have raised questions that are difficult to answer.  See Explaining Bird Flocks in Audibon Magazine.

I believe we need to look to the inherent wholeness in nature to understand why birds flock the way they do.  An ecologist understands nature as a web of interdependent systems -- a holistic process that goes far beyond simple cause and effect explanations.  In fact, the more complex and diverse a system, the hardier and healthier it becomes.  When it comes to flocking birds, perhaps there is something to the way nature works that we are only beginning to understand.

Termite Mound by Razmataz

How do those wondrous, crystalline patterns form within a snowflake? How does a termite colony know how to build tall, palatial mound with no centralized control?  How do a meager 24,000 genes create the incredible human complexity made of trillions of interdependent cells and millions of interellated processes, including the ability for you to read and make sense of this blog?

The answer may be found in the principle of emergence -- how complex patterns arise from many simple interactions and seem to create something greater than the sum of it's constituent parts. This feels rather metaphysical, and so there has been resistance to this concept within science. But no reliance on magic is needed. To understand the world this way requires a radical change in thinking, a paradigm shift one might say.  Look for it, it's everywhere.

I think I will post these thoughts in a complex system with no central organization or governance that is fundamentally altering the nature of our global culture and economy, helping nations rise and fall, and shaping human socialization like never before.  Just a bunch of connected users and computers really.

Walking the Dog on Mars

Lunar Eclipse by Glen Tepke

Some of our most most profound moments arise when we are mindful of the ordinary, everyday happenings in the natural flow of our lives. A wondrous thing can occur when we look with fresh eyes...  we experience reality anew.  An honest and open look may throw us into confusion at first, but then there's always the potential for that "ah" moment when our understanding of nature deepens, and our conceptual world broadens... a moment of profound satisfaction.

That's what happened to me last night as I walked my small pet beagle, and  I looked up at the moon.

I tilted my head, and the shape of the craters and lunar seas took on the form of a rabbit, but that was not the surprise.  I've traveled the southern hemisphere where the rabbit on the moon resides.  I saw myself standing on the surface of the earth, nestled within the thin sliver of blue atmosphere that shelters all life as we know it.  The moon stood far beyond that safety, beautiful, cold and sterile.  The stars around it felt even further, beyond my imaginings...  I experienced a brief moment of fear.  The earth, my very existence, seemed fragile, a tiny sphere lost in an immense universe as lifeless as the moon.

NASA Illustration of Curiosity

How outrageous we humans are, I thought.  Half a century ago some of us went to the moon... how outrageously curious and bold.

It occurred to me that as I stood there, at that very same moment, on the surface of Mars several machines of our making roamed. My eyes scanned the sky for that tiny reddish tinged light in the sky and found it.  I felt a pull on the leash and noticed my dog sniffling around a bush hoping to find something.  There was an excitement to him.

I pictured Curiosity, NASA's latest rover, sniffling here and there, not so different from the efforts of the beagle at my feet.

It was an uplifting feeling, an ah moment, not so much about the moon but about ourselves.  The image of Neil Armstrong climbing down the ladder of the lunar lander stood sharply in my mind.  No matter the cultural and political constraints of the day, I mused, we will always be excitedly searching.  We will always be venturing forth because that is who we are....

Winds of Life

Pomarine Jaeger by Patrick Coin

Birds often get caught by the fierce winds of hurricanes, finding shelter in the eye and riding a tropical cyclone, sometimes for thousands of miles.  Some storms make landfall and travel far inland, and wayward sea birds settle on foreign coasts or in lakes and ponds.


After the Superstorm Sandy, pomarine jaegers were found in many places as unlikely as Pennsylvania. Rescued pelicans in Rhode Island were flown back to a place more like their natural home, Florida.

Birds of all stripes follow the wind during their yearly migrations.  Sometimes the process is interrupted by violent events like Sandy, and they may end up far from their preferred habitats.  There were many such sightings after that massive northeastern hybrid storm: a Ross gull from the arctic turned up in Upstate New York, for instance, and in New Jersey a red-billed tropicbird was spotted.

Sandy is an example of how life itself is guided by the ubiquitous winds that move and shape clouds and weather.  Sometimes the effects are gentle as well as beneficial.  Throughout the world, the winds bring essential rain far inland, to places that lack their own source of moisture.  The breezes of the earth disperse seeds so many species of plants need to propagate.

See the relationship of wind and current in this NASA Scatterometer Image.

The effects of the wind on the biosphere are great and small.  The prevailing winds push on surface water creating great oceanic rivers, like the Gulf Stream; currents that in turn circumnavigate the globe and help spread the excess, equatorial heat from the direct sun to the rest of the earth.  Without that process the tropics would be scorched of life, and great masses of ice would abound in much of the rest of the planet.

The wind... although we can’t see it, we can feel it as an ever-present force.  Like with Sandy, it reminds us that in life everything changes.  The nature of the wind is written into our very thoughts and words.  If change is near we say there something in the wind.  Unpredictable people are said to be as fickle as the wind.

And on this earth the winds of change forever blow, reminding us nothing is permanent, not even the mountains that over geologic spans of time are beaten down by the wind and rain, and like great swells ultimately return to the waters of the ocean.

White-headed Capuchins of Central America

White-headed Capuchin, a photo by JoeOcchipinti on Flickr.

As New World monkeys of Central America, white-headed capuchins are perhaps one of the most recognizable of all primates, best known as partners of the street-performing organ grinders of early 20th century New York City. White-faced Capuchins are known to be very clever and can easily evade capture. In fact, they are so intelligent that they are sometimes used as animal helpers for  people who are paraplegic.

In our travel to Costa Rica we were fortunate enough to observe two different troupes of Capuchin, one in a mangrove forest and another near our beach hotel.  In the mangroves, they were wary of us and posturing for us to leave (above), while by the beach resort they couldn't have cared less, and happily socialized with each other (left).  I will long remember the day when standing in the growing shadows of tall palms, we watched these wondrous creatures until the sun set into the Pacific.

I can tell you, it is truly amazing just how human-like these creatures are.  In the wild these amazing animals employ the use of tools to access and gather food, and have been known to use plants medicinally.  Capuchins have been seen rubbing citrus fruits and vines on their fur, perhaps in an effort to rid themselves of parasites or as a way to scent themselves. On a few occasions, researches have observed them armed with sticks for protection.  There is one story of  mother frantically hitting a snake so it would let go of her infant.

These arboreal creatures are very social and like to live in large groups, often establishing alliances with each other. Kinship is important, particularly female to female bonds.  Females are pregnant for about five months and usually bear a single young. Mothers share parenting duties.

Like humans the young mature slowly, usually weaned in about a year, and remain adolescents for several years.  They have been known to live to fifty years and beyond.

Click here to see more capuchin images from our trip to Costa Rica.