Changzhou sky turns pink during atmospheric phenomenon

On the morning of August 31, the sky over Changzhou in China’s Jiangsu province turned intense shades of pink and red for approximately seven to eight minutes. The visual phenomenon occurred around 5:30 a.m. as large, dark storm clouds moved over the city, followed shortly by heavy rainfall.

Scientific explanation attributes the coloring to a combination of the Sun’s low position on the horizon and Rayleigh scattering. As sunlight travels through a greater portion of the atmosphere during sunrise, shorter wavelengths like blue and violet are scattered away, leaving longer wavelengths such as red and pink to dominate. This effect was intensified by extremely high humidity and the presence of water droplets and particles in the atmosphere ahead of the storm, which altered how light reflected between cloud layers.