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>> When we look up at clouds and see what's immediately
above our heads we see localised phenomena.
When you zoom up and look at them from space you realise
that although what's immediately
above you is a localised phenomenon, it's actually part
of an enormous planetary event that reminds us that we're part
of global processes - enormous planetary geophysical processes -
that affect us.
I've been writing books about clouds for 10 years now.
This is my third one entitled, Extraordinary Clouds,
and it's really a byproduct of an earlier book that I wrote
for the Met Office, called the Cloud Book,
which was really supposed to be a serious account
of the international cloud classification and all
of the cloud types that fall within that.
When I was researching that book I kept coming
across these clouds that didn't fit
into the international cloud classification. There were sort
of oddities and extraneous clouds, so I put them to one side
and after a while I had more than a hundred of these images.
Now I began to look for them in photo libraries
and archives; I asked photographer friends
if they had any pictures lying around of weird
and wonderful clouds and after a while I had more
than a thousand images of extraordinary clouds, most
of which didn't seem to really fit
in to the cloud classification as it stands.
The Environment Institute did a very clever thing,
they appointed a Writer in Residence
and Artist in Residence, Martin John Callanan, to coincide.
>> Unlike Richard who's got a huge fascination
with clouds I've never really considered clouds before.
I've been more interested in systems and systems
that define how we live our life.
The idea behind the cloud globe is to highlight the fragility
of the environmental systems that operate in the world
and so I took the water system represented by the clouds
above the Earth's surface,
and this state is collected constantly from satellites
which are positioned 36,000 kilometres
above the Earth's surface. I've taken this data from one second
in time where all six satellites match up
and together show the whole world. This data has taken
over nine months and involving lots of different scientists
from different departments at UCL.
It ends up with this object, which is created
from nylon powder
at the Digital Manufacturing Centre
in the Bartlett School of Architecture
and it takes two days to create the whole globe,
as a laser beam slowly goes
across the powder heating it and setting it. The surface only shows the
clouds; you can't see the continents below
in the gaps. I wanted to highlight
that the whole Earth is interdependent.
>> When you feel something like the wind
on your cheek you're not just feeling something random, you're
feeling a very localised consequence
of something that's global and something enormous,
this energy budget that comes
from the sun hitting the surface of the Earth.
Often when you look at a cloud briefly you imagine
that it's just white in colour and a bit featureless
and formless, but if you look closely you realise
that clouds are actually made up of a huge chromatic range
of colour, and shade, and volume, and texture
and it's constantly on the move and constantly shifting.
I think most people tend to glance up at the sky
and think, Oh, that's rather depressing,
or, That's rather beautiful, but if you look at it
for a few minutes on end you'll see incredible amounts
of change. You'll see things happening,
you'll see little sort of castles being built,
you'll see decay and movement and life and light,
and it's an absolutely extraordinary visual feast
up there in the sky.
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