Morning Clouds

by Robert Bales

Title

Morning Clouds

Artist

Robert Bales

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

Clouds are formed in Earth's atmosphere when water evaporates into vapor from oceans, lakes, ponds, and even streams and rivers; or by evapotranspiration over moist areas of Earth's land surface. The vapor rises up into colder areas of the atmosphere due to convective, orographic, or frontal lifting. The water vapor attaches itself to condensation nuclei which could be anything from dust to microscopic particles of salt and debris. Once the vapor has been cooled to saturation, the cloud becomes visible. All weather-producing clouds form in the troposphere, the lowest major layer of the atmosphere. However very small amounts of water vapor can be found higher up in the stratosphere and mesosphere and may condense into very thin clouds if the air temperatures are sufficiently cold. One branch of meteorology is focused on the study of nephology or cloud physics.
Tropospheric clouds are divided into physical categories with names based upon Latin root words that indicate physical structure and process of formation. Clouds of the cirriform category are generally thin and occur mostly in the form of filaments. Two other basic categories are stratiform with clouds that are mostly sheet-like in structure, and cumuliform that appear heaped, rolled, or rippled. Two additional categories derived from the cumuliform group are stratocumuliform which are cumuliform with stratiform characteristics (rolled or rippled), and cumulonimbiform, towering cumuliform clouds often with complex structures that include cirriform tops and multiple accessory clouds.
In the troposphere, ten genus types are derived by cross-classifying the physical categories into families defined by altitude range; high, middle, low, and vertical (with low to middle cloud base). The last of these can be subdivided into two sub-families or groups to distinguish between moderate and towering vertical types. Most cloud genera are divided into species, varieties, or both, based on specific physical characteristics of the clouds.
Cirriform category clouds are only found in the high-altitude family and therefore constitute a single genus cirrus. High stratiform and stratocumuliform types carry the prefix cirro- which yield the genus names cirrostratus and cirrocumulus. Clouds of the middle-altitude family have the prefix alto- (altostratus and altocumulus) to distinguish them from the high clouds. Strato- is dropped from high and middle stratocumuliform genus names to avoid double-prefixing. Low altitude stratiform, stratocumuliform, and cumuliform genera (stratus, stratocumulus, and small cumulus) carry no height-related prefixes.

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April 5th, 2013

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