Aside from sparking creativity, clouds serve several important scientific purposes, from helping meteorologists predict the weather to facilitating life on Earth.
The building blocks of clouds are water and particles —of dust, dirt, or sea salt—known as cloud condensation nuclei. These nuclei are everywhere in the atmosphere. They attract water vapor and as they ascend the vapor condenses to form liquid water or ice, which results in the formation of tiny globules called cloud droplets. Much smaller than raindrops, cloud droplets are extremely light and amass while they float , mixing with air to form the fluffy formations we see suspended in the sky.
Clouds generally form within the troposphere, or the layer of atmosphere closest to the earth. As they rise and fall, they may appear in infinite variations. To create some order scientists have established three broad categories into which most clouds can be grouped.
Below that is the home of mid-level clouds, which generally occur between 6, and 25, feet. Within each of these three tiers, scientists further organize clouds into ten broad categories based on the general shapes the clouds take.
High clouds are classified as either cirrus, cirrostratus, or cirrocumulus. Cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals and appear thin, white, and wispy. Cirrostratus clouds are whitish and transparent and tend to blanket the whole sky, sometimes creating a halo effect around the sun or moon.
Cirrocumulus clouds are also white and can be sheet-like and rippled. Mid-level clouds are usually gray and are identified as either altocumulus, altostratus, or nimbostratus. Altocumulus clouds are full of liquid water but generally do not produce rain. They are patchy and often appear as ripples or rows.
Altostratus clouds cover the sky but are darker than cirrostratus clouds and may give the sun or moon a fuzzy appearance. Altostratus clouds may portend a storm. Nimbostratus clouds are thick and dark and can produce both rain and snow. Low clouds fall into four divisions: cumulus, stratus, cumulonimbus, and stratocumulus. Cumulus clouds are a cloud-spotting favorite: They are big, white, and cottony and—depending on your imagination—may look like a bear, an apple, or any other familiar object.
Cumulonimbus clouds are heavy and dense; they tend to build dramatically upward and are often harbingers of thunderstorms, hail, or tornadoes. Stratus clouds appear as a thin gray layer in the sky. Stratocumulus clouds are patchy, gray and white, and usually resemble a honeycomb.
Clouds are so amazing! They can be formed into various shapes! Therefore, clouds are very important to the world! Not just because they protect us from the burning, hot, ball of fire, but because they open up a new window of imagination. I really like your poem because it really reflected the importance of clouds and how they are not typically thought of as important.
That is great writing! Your email address will not be published. By clicking "Decline", this post will be reverted to a draft. Any comment you leave below will be added to the feedback on the draft. All Posts. Dust and other particles floating in the air provide surfaces for water vapor to turn into water drops or ice crystals. The tiny drops of water condense on the particles to form cloud droplets.
Clouds are made up of a bunch of cloud droplets bundled together with raindrops. There are a few reasons clouds float first, the droplets in a cloud are small. Very small. A water droplet in a cloud may only be 20 micrometers across. That is half as wide as a typical human hair, and about the same size across as a particle of dust. Even though dust is heavier than the air around it, a dust particle is so small that it can float in the air for a long time before falling.
Water droplets in the air behave the same way as dust. Liquid water here on earth is constantly changed into an invisible gas called water vapor and drifted away into the atmosphere. Notice that evaporated contains the word vapor. Water from oceans, lakes, rivers, swamps, swimming pools, and everywhere water comes in contact with air will evaporate and enter the sky water vapor.
Liquid water changes into a gas when water molecules get extra energy from a heat source such as the Sun or from other water molecules running into them. These energetic molecules then escape from the liquid water in the form of gas.
In the process of changing from liquid to gas, the molecules absorb heat, which they carry with them into the atmosphere. That cools the water they leave behind. The air can only hold a certain amount of water vapor which depends on the temperature and weight of the air or atmospheric pressure in a given area. The higher the temperature or atmospheric pressure, the more water vapor the air can hold.
What happens if a saturated volume of air cools or the atmospheric pressure drops? The air is no longer able to hold all that water vapor:.
Clouds develop and occupy different parts of the sky. Some clouds are extremely high while other clouds are very low in the sky touching the ground. They are called Fog.
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