It might seem incredible that this is simply Nature, but it is. The view is from above, looking down on Earth's clouds and surface. The ripples are what scientists call gravity waves.

They occur over a deck of marine stratocumulus clouds. Similar to the ripples on a pond, gravity waves sometimes appear when the relatively stable and stratified air masses associated with stratocumulus cloud layers are disturbed by a vertical trigger from the underlying terrain, or by a thunderstorm updraft or some other vertical wind shear, said Clare Averill of Raytheon and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The stratocumulus cellular clouds that underlie the wave feature are associated with sinking air that is strongly cooled at the level of the cloud-tops -- such clouds are common over mid-latitude oceans when the air is unperturbed by cyclonic or frontal activity.

This image, taken from a satellite and released earlier this month, is centered over the Indian Ocean (at about 38.9° South, 80.6° East). It was acquired on Oct. 29, 2003. It is a natural-color image from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR).

Credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team