Researchers from Rutgers University in New Brunswick studied the process of creating a picture of "Scream" by Edvard Munch and came to the conclusion that the Norwegian artist was inspired by a rare meteorological phenomenon - "mother-of-pearl" clouds.

As reported in an article published in July by the "Bulletin of the American Meteorological Community", in 1893 Munch wrote in his diary about a walk, during which he observed "blood-red clouds and flames". "I leaned on the hedge and - dead tired - watched. On flaming clouds, like blood and sword over the city - over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends are gone; I stood there trembling with horror, and I felt this powerful, endless cry of the power of nature, "wrote the artist. Scientists also found evidence that in the beginning of the 1890s, "pearl" clouds actually appeared over Norway. Around the same time Munch finished the first of four versions of "Scream". One of the authors of the study, Professor Alan Robock, suggests that in "Scream" Munch depicted not his confusion, but a man who tries not to hear the "cry of nature". "No man screams, but the sky. He puts his hands on his ears to drown out the cry of nature, "- said Robock, who is quoted by earther. gizmodo. com.

"Pearlescent" is called polar stratospheric clouds. They are formed at very low temperature and high humidity, most often at dawn or at sunset. The unusual color of "mother-of-pearl" clouds is obtained because of the microdynamics, in which the sun's rays are simultaneously refracted and scattered.

Robock and his colleagues developed the theory of another group of scientists who in 2017 suggested that Munch could be affected by "mother-of-pearl" clouds. Earlier, art historians believed that the creation of the "Scream" of the artist inspired the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia.

"Scream" - one of the most famous paintings in expressionism. In addition to her several versions of the series include paintings "Anxiety", "Melancholy" and "Despair".