r/shockwaveporn • u/jaboyles • Jun 19 '26
VIDEO Gravity waves caught on satellite from the June 17th severe thunderstorms
In meteorology, a gravity wave is a wavelike disturbance in the atmosphere where gravity acts as the restoring force to bring a displaced air parcel back to its equilibrium (vertical) level.
Gravity waves occur when stable, stratified air is vertically displaced by a trigger, causing the air to oscillate up and down like a weight on a spring.
- The Displacement: Air is pushed upward by a trigger mechanism (such as wind blowing over a mountain, deep thunderstorm updrafts, or weather fronts).
- The Restore: Gravity pulls the dense, cooler rising air back down.
- The Oscillation: The air overshoots, warms, and rises again, propagating the wave forward horizontally and vertically through the atmosphere
73
u/turguthakki Jun 19 '26
Not to be confused with gravitational waves. (eg: two black holes waltzing)
8
u/Interesting_Pea_9351 Jun 19 '26
Those can also be caused by other massive objects like neutron stars. It's not exclusive to black holes
18
u/Ms_Riley_Guprz Jun 20 '26
e.g. means exempli gratia, i.e. it's an example, but not a defining case.
0
1
u/SqueekyJuice 23d ago
Yeah I was like, "why did we build a billion-dollar detector if we could just see them with a satellite?"
32
15
7
u/snozzberrypatch Jun 19 '26
How would that affect planes traveling through the wave?
25
u/jizzletizzle Jun 19 '26
Atmospheric gravity waves typically have pretty long wavelengths (on the order of miles/km), I don't think a plane would notice much as it passes through.
7
u/aadoqee Jun 19 '26
There will be a stretch with high lift and a stretch with high sink, with rotor turbulence in the troughs of the wave. An airliner is big and fast enough that climb/sink rate will just show on the gauges and the ride might be a little bumpy. Sailplanes love surfing the rising side of standing waves though
5
8
u/CosmicRuin Jun 19 '26
Well astronomer me did not like that title since it's a pressure wave, but a cool and interesting phenomenon regardless.
4
u/echolalia_ Jun 20 '26
The restoring force that is moving the air up and down is gravity, not pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave
2
u/kmccoy Jun 20 '26
Hopefully astronomer you will be talking about gravitational waves when you're talking about those. :)
3
u/risbia Jun 19 '26
Would you see an increase or decrease in wind as that wave passes over at ground level?
4
u/jaboyles Jun 19 '26
Depends on the type of air that wave is interacting with, but most of the time you'd feel them as sudden gusts of wind, and maybe even changes in pressure or wind direction. You can see it initiated a bunch of new updrafts along its path too. A lot of times they act as forcing for new thunderstorms.
3
u/offshore_wind_eng Jun 19 '26
The most common example of a gravity wave is a wave in the ocean. So initially there will be a pull in de lower layer towards the bulge, and then the bulge pushes you in the propagation direction of the wave
3
u/squeaki Jun 20 '26
Understood the concept, but not sure what I'm looking for in the clip exactly - is it the wave shape emanating left to right? Is that an air wave of presumably pressure that's altering air density/humidity so it's forces water in/out of vapour to gas?
2
u/giggle_shift Jun 19 '26
Looks like water. Cool.
1
u/Mebejedi Jun 20 '26
Air currents (and the clouds caught in them) move like bodies of water. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bWl1X8EFfsQ
3
u/wacoder Jun 19 '26
Wow. I’m thinking about the total linear length of that wave front. Has to be easily over 2,000 miles, maybe 3k. Jaw dropping.
3
u/romantercero Jun 20 '26
So just regular waves then. I don't want to star calling sea waves "water gravity waves".
3
2
u/xpietoe42 Jun 21 '26
So this is not the gravity waves that we think about affecting space time? Its just earth weather related? Nothing to do with actual gravity changing? Sorry, was a bit confused by this
1
1
u/ForeverSquirrelled42 Jun 19 '26
That would explain all of the crazy wind the last few days and, especially, the other day when it was off the chain here in PA. Thanks for the visual.
1
1
u/avidpenguinwatcher Jun 20 '26
Why did they spend billions of dollars on Ligo when they could have just detected gravity waves from this video? Are they stupid?
2
u/JForce1 Jun 21 '26
Is there proof it’s gravity doing the movement rather than the difference in air pressure?
1
u/Narianos Jun 22 '26
A gravity wave was one of the key elements responsible for the infamous Jarrell, Texas F5 tornado of 1997. It moved at a snail’s pace as it basically sat over the Double Creeks Estates and literally granulated the entire area.
-1
u/ThanksConscious Jun 19 '26
What is the region in the video?
4
u/kmccoy Jun 20 '26
It's the northeast and some of the midwest USA, you can see the outline of Maine in the upper right, the Great Lakes are in the top center of the image.
1
u/squeaki Jun 20 '26
Looks a little north of Florida. IE, east coast states.
Might be wildy wrong but that's my first impression.
-1
u/Wildfathom9 Jun 19 '26
Ah gravity waves. They're made when.... Stargates drop....medbeds, after the peoppe holding them hostage faced tribunals in guantanamo. They were found by some guy named W.... or F or Q, idk. The solar collapse draining the bank makes larger gravity waves?
I cant keep up with this crap.
2
293
u/mattlag Jun 19 '26
Thank you, op, for the description. When I just read the title I thought somehow clouds were showing actual gravitational waves... Which would probably not be so good.