The Azerbaijan State News Agency

SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS PROBE DISTANT CLOUDS WITH GIANT ANTARCTIC LASER

28.09.2010 [16:41]
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Baku, September 28 (AZERTAC). Australian scientists in Antarctica will use a giant laser to measure climate change in the atmosphere. The device will gauge the temperature of clouds almost 100 kilometers above the Earth.

Researchers at the Australian Antarctic Division are testing a theory that a warming climate on Earth is linked with a phenomenon called global cooling up in the mesosphere. That is the atmospheric level that starts 50 kilometers above the planet.

The giant laser will probe what are known as luminous clouds in the mesosphere. Scientists say the brighter and colder they are, the more the Earth heats up. Man`s influence on such changes is as yet not clearly understood.

Jeff Cumpston is a member of the Australian research team in the Antarctic. He says conditions within this band of cloud can help indicate how fast the planet is warming.