A mysterious `rainbow` cloud appears in the sky of China... What is the explanation for the phenomenon?

Arab Weather - Pictures and videos that garnered thousands of views spread on social media platforms and left viewers in a state of shock due to a strange "rainbow" cloud that appeared over a city in China, where social media users wondered what could be the cause of it!

In the stunning footage, filmed in Haikou, in China's Hainan province, and published on August 26, the rainbow radiant circle can be seen hovering above a dark cloud, the New York Post reports .

It turned out that the scene that appears from outside the planet is actually a "pileus cloud" or (scarf cloud), which are soft clouds that form above a dense and growing cumulus cloud, which is formed due to the upward currents in a thunderstorm cloud.

The reason the clouds are colored in rainbow colors

What happens when this cloud forms, there is rapidly rising air in the tall cumulus clouds, and when these air currents meet with the cooler air above them, moisture condenses directly along the top of the clouds, forming supercooled water droplets or suspended ice crystals.

The appearance of iris colors, is actually an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere called "cloud iridescence", and this occurs when water droplets or ice crystals in the cloud cause sunlight to be refracted and deflected around the outside of the droplets, decomposing into the colors of the spectrum.

The difference between a fake cloud photo and the original photo

It is worth noting that some cloud images have been modified so that some clouds, shadows, and sunsets have been added, and the colors in the cloud have been saturated. The following explains the difference between the original and the modified image.

This modified cloud:

This is a video showing the modified image:

Fact check

Original photo stitched into a sunset background and edited into an over-saturated video (which went viral)
Surrounding clouds do not make sense meteorologically
Light angle looks wrong at sunset

Original from Yunnan (China) 16 Aug 2022 by JiaQi Sun pic.twitter.com/oyJdSWRFpN

— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) August 28, 2022