Rare Noctilucent Clouds Over London

I was woken up at around 2am on the 17th June 2020 by maintenance workers using power tools on the railway next to my flat. I looked out to see what was making the noise and spotted what I first thought was some sort of light show, directly north around the Olympic Park. As my bleary eyes cleared it dawned on me that what I was actually seeing were noctilucent clouds. I knew about them but had never seen anything quite like them – inctricate woven ribbons of light, evolving and as they appeared to drift slowly northwards.*

I watched the clouds for over an hour in awe and amazement at how lucky I was to be woken up just at the right time to see them and record the time-lapse video at the bottom.

Noctilucent clouds are made of ice crystals and are very high in the atmosphere (around 50 miles or 80km). They aren’t visible in the daytime but because they are so high, they can be lit by the sun in the night (like man-made satellites and the moon is).

There’s a theory that climate change means sightings of these unusual clouds will become more common due to increased methane gas in the upper atmosphere which breaks down and provides the moisture needed for their formation. The clouds also need dust particles for the ice crystals to form and one theory is that it comes from meteors breaking up in the high atmosphere.

* I realised that the clouds were too far away for them to be actullay moving. Rather than moving, it was different parts of the cloud of ice crystals being illuminated by the sun as the Earth turned.