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Clouds
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Clouds are an important part of earth's weather. Clouds carry water that falls to the earth's surface as rain and snow to then support all forms of life. Clouds can sometimes bring destruction in the form of hail or tornadoes.
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Clouds are white because they reflect the light of the sun. Light is made up of colors of the rainbow and when you add them all together you get white. The sun appears a yellow color because it sends out more yellow light than any other color. Clouds reflect all the colors the exact same amount so they look white.
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Clouds form when relatively warm air containing water vapor is lighter than its surrounding air and this causes it to rise. As it rises it cools and the vapor condenses out of the air as micro-droplets. These tiny particles of water are relatively densely packed and sunlight cannot penetrate far into the cloud before it is reflected out, giving a cloud its characteristic white color. As a cloud matures, the droplets may combine to produce larger droplets, which may combine to form droplets large enough to fall as rain. In this process of accumulation, the space between droplets becomes larger and larger, permitting light to penetrate much farther into the cloud. If the cloud is sufficiently large and the droplets within are spaced far enough apart, it may be that a percentage of the light which enters the cloud is not reflected back out before it is absorbed (Think of how much farther one can see in a heavy rain as opposed to how far one can see in a heavy fog).
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Clouds form when the air rises. As a blob of air rises it expands and gets colder, the colder air cannot hold as much water as warmer air. As the temperature and air pressure continue to drop, tiny water droplets group together into clumps called cloud droplets. At this point, the blob of air becomes a visible cloud. If the cloud keeps going up, the cloud droplets will clump together and form water droplets. These water droplets are too heavy to float in the air and they fall from the sky as either rain or snow.
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Condensing moisture from ocean currents in some parts of the world creates clouds that stay uniformly in position above that current for months at a time. This example shows clouds hanging above the cold Benguela current, which travels northward along the Atlantic coast of southwestern Africa. It is interesting that while the ocean is densely cloud-covered and the clouds lap at the coast, they never cross the coastline. The pinkish-colored Namib Desert is one of the driest places on Earth, confirming that the cloud associated with the ocean current does not stry off its prescribed track. Indeed the Namib Desert is home to unique inhabitants - insects with leg hairs especially adapted to collect moisture from morning dew - a strange irony of life on Earth where moisture-laden clouds hang so close by. (Courtesy LPI/NASA.
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Clouds come in many sizes and a seemingly endless variety of shapes. They may display a very threatening appearance or be exceptionally beautiful and peaceful. This exercise is designed to help you identify the different types of clouds and to gain a deeper appreciation for them.
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