Hurricane Helene sent gravity waves rippling through the atmosphere far above the southeastern United States, new NASA images reveal.
As the destructive hurricane made landfall, Hurricane Helene’s atmospheric ripples extended well north of Florida, according to recent NASA photos.
As the hurricane moved miles away, the agency’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) recorded concentric bands of atmospheric gravity waves throughout the Southeast.
According to a statement from AWE principal investigator Ludger Scherliess, a physicist at Utah State University, circular waves from Helene are observed billowing westward from Florida’s northwest coast, resembling rings of water spreading from a drop in a pond.
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The air is divided into peaks and troughs by atmospheric gravity waves, which are vertical ripples that travel through tranquil regions of the atmosphere. Large thunderstorms, windstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and even tsunamis can produce these waves, according to NASA. (They are not the same as gravitational waves, which are rippling effects in space-time caused by extreme cosmic events like mergers between black holes.)
By monitoring airglow, a faint light emitted by gases in the mesosphere, the third layer of Earth’s atmosphere, the AWE instrument, which is installed on the International Space Station, is able to identify these waves. Between 31 and 53 miles (50 and 85 kilometers) above the surface of the earth is the mesosphere. Although cloud tops can soar into the stratosphere during extremely powerful storms, most weather happens in the troposphere, the first layer of Earth’s atmosphere. We refer to this as “overshooting cloud tops.”
The Helene gravity-wave photographs are some of the first AWE images NASA has made public after AWE began watching in November 2023. Helping scientists comprehend how Earth’s surface weather might impact space weather—the disruptions in the upper atmosphere brought on by encounters with charged cosmic particles—is one of the project’s objectives.
When Hurricane Helene hit land close to Perry, Florida, it was a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 km/h). After that, the storm continued inland, stalling over western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where it caused severe flooding. TheAssociated Press reports that about 230 people were slain.