Thread: Red sunrises and early harvest moon?????

Tweet

In case the rest of you whom are farther south than I are curious, we've been having red/orange moons and red/orange sun rises. I saw it last night and was a little freaked out. I was like what is going on now? Well the cause is smoke drifting down from the wild fires clear up in NW Canada. That is crazy isn't it? We have a haze in the air that is blocking the sun from coming through, and it has allowed our temps to be a couple degrees cooler as well. All the particulate matter in the air is the reason for the discolored moon and sun. Here's an article on it from one of the local news channels.

Canadian wildfires continue to impact Iowa weather | Local News - KCCI Home

So is this considered global warming?!?!?! roflmao..

Last night we noticed that the sun was a solid red disc about 30 minutes before sunset. Very different. This morning's rising sun was much the same, filtered through a heavy haze

The closer the sun is to the horizon, the more atmosphere the light has to penetrate. Small dust particles and other pollution in the air cause the blue, indigo and violet colors of the spectrum to scatter to a higher degree than the orange and red colors (Rayleigh Scattering - named for a British Lord, I believe). The more small particles in the air, the more the blues scatter and the more pronounced the red/orange color.

Apparently, I haven't forgotten all of my college physics. I loved those courses.

The difference we noted was that the sun was maybe thirty to thirty five degrees above the horizon when the sun was a solid rosy red disk in the sky. We often see the Rayleigh Scattering effect as the sun is partially below the horizon, but this was maybe thirty to forty five minutes before sunset, with the sun still well above the horizon. I'm sure that it's smoke, like Ryan pointed out.

There was an article about a red sun hovering over Chicago earlier this month, caused by Canadian forest fires. Smoke is just a cloud of particles, and it causes scattering also. Scattering is the only reason we see mostly reds in these situations. I may have been wrong calling it Rayleigh Scattering, though. It's just what I remembered from 50 years ago.