Cold front, warm front
[ acquired November 26, 2011 ] Weather fronts are as familiar as rain. For those who live outside of Earth’s tropics, the movement of warm and cold masses of air creates the weather, and when the two clash, it often rains. Understanding what happens when cold and warm air meet (cold and warm fronts) has given meteorologists the ability to predict the weather. But for all of their familiarity with fronts, scientists have only recently gotten a detailed view of them. These four images contrast computer models of weather fronts (lower images) with the view from NASA’s Cloudsat (top), a space-based radar. The radar instrument on the satellite provides a detailed view of the cloud structure and precipitation in the clouds, helping scientists refine their understanding of common weather patterns and improve their ability to predict the weather. The left image pair shows a cold front moving from left to right into a warm mass of air. The cold, dense air lifts the warm air like a wedge. The ri...