A newly released photograph taken from the International Space Station shows the rarely seen phenomenon of internal waves - colossal movements of water spanning kilometers that ripple under the surface of the Earth's oceans.
Observed above the Caribbean island of Trinidad in January, internal waves are seldom encountered and hardly ever photographed, but have been known to affect submariners and oil rig workers with their enormous power.
The appearance of the waves in the pictures is enhanced because of sunlight or sun-glint reflected back to the space station, which makes the waves visible to the crew member's camera.
This astronaut photograph taken from the International Space Station (ISS) shows the north coast of the island of Trinidad in the southeastern Caribbean Sea and the huge internal waves that are visible in the top left of the picture
The clearest waves can bee seen in the top left of the photograph, coming in from the northwest due to tidal flow toward Trinidad, says NASA's Earth Observatory to Yahoo News.
A separate set of internal waves is moving through the northeast and according to NASA is most likely due to the water rolling off the edge of the continental shelf in the Caribbean, where the seafloor suddenly drops off.
A single waves can span 1,000 kilometers and have massive effects on the planet's climate, as well as on undersea cables and even cause sudden drops in altitude for airliners caught in their wake.
A satellite image of internal waves (with a wavelength of about 2 kilometers), which are generated by flow from the the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, at the east of Gibraltar and Ceuta
In this photograph of the San Francisco Bay area taken from the International Space Station Sets of internal waves traveling east impinge on the coastline south of the city
According to Thomas Peacock, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, understanding the waves can provide insights into climate change because the huge formations occur where warmer water meets colder water.
They have previously been observed in lesser detail at the Straits of Gibraltar at the gateway of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and off the coast of San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean.
They have previously been observed in lesser detail at the Straits of Gibraltar at the gateway of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean and off the coast of San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean.
While their existence has been known for around a century, it is still a mystery to scientists how internal waves form and dissipate and how they effect the environment in which they travel through.
The waves are made up of moving regions of air or water that are more or less dense than their surroundings because of differences in the temperature of the water and salt content.
They can be generated underwater by powerful storms, or hurricanes and in the atmosphere when air hits a huge mountain range such as the Rockies or the Himalayas.
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