Clouds Are Weirder at the Top Than We Thought

If you’ve ever been on a plane, you’re probably familiar with what cloud tops look like: generally white and fluffy, with dips of blue-gray here and there. But the physics behind cloud tops had long puzzled scientists—until now.

At Brookhaven National Laboratory’s facilities in Long Island, New York, researchers have developed a new type of lidar—a laser-based remote sensing device. This lidar captures fine details of cloud structures at a scale of roughly 0.4 inches (1…