{"id":18402,"date":"2023-12-21T11:04:02","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T05:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=18402"},"modified":"2025-04-05T10:41:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T05:11:23","slug":"psc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/psc\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar Stratospheric clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Polar Stratospheric clouds (PSC)<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>These are also known as\u00a0nacreous clouds or mother of pearl, due to their iridescence.<\/li>\n<li>Formation:\n<ul>\n<li>These are formed in\u00a0very cold conditions\u00a0over Polar Regions and within the stratosphere, around 12-19 miles (19-31km) high, far above our normal clouds.<\/li>\n<li>These clouds are\u00a0made of smaller ice particles than those that form more common clouds.<\/li>\n<li>These small particles help to scatter light in a different way, which gives them their unique appearance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>PSCs typically make their first\u00a0appearance in January.<\/li>\n<li>Impacts of these clouds\n<ul>\n<li>The frequency of these clouds is often a\u00a0harbinger of ozone depletion, as they play a crucial role in stratospheric chemistry.<\/li>\n<li>PSCs\u00a0provide a surface for chemical reactions where benign forms of chlorine are converted into reactive, ozone-destroying forms.<\/li>\n<li>They also\u00a0remove nitrogen compounds that would otherwise moderate the destructive impact of chlorine on the ozone layer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What are Halogens?<\/h3>\n<p>The term Halogen in Greek means salt-producing because it reacts with many metals to produce salts. They are a group of elements located in Group 17 of the periodic table which includes fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), iodine (I), and astatine (At). In 1826, Swedish chemist Jons Berzelius coined the term halogen for the entire group of elements.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiatoday.in\/science\/story\/rare-phenomena-make-the-sky-glow-in-arctic-its-not-aurora-2478343-2023-12-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Rare phenomena make the sky glow in Arctic. It&#8217;s not aurora<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polar Stratospheric clouds are also known as nacreous clouds or mother of pearl, due to their iridescence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}