CLOUD TYPES CLASSIFICATION
DIFFERENT CLOUD TYPES
While clouds appear in infinite shapes and sizes they fall into some basic forms: cirrus, cumulus and stratus. These three basic categories can be combined and then form ten basic types of clouds.
However not all clouds are formed by the usual engines of weather. Some clouds can be born from wildfires, the heat of volcano, and a variety of human activities; jet aircraft draw long contrails across the sky, some industries pump clouds into the air, and even the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb is a product of the condensation of water vapor. These examples are called unusual clouds, or strange clouds.
Classification by categories.
By convention, clouds are vertically divided into three levels: low, middle, and high. Each level is defined by the range of levels at which each type of cloud typically appears.
These variation are due to temperature, polar air is generally colder than temperature or tropical air at equal elevations throughout the troposphere. Thus air cools to its dew point relatively close to the ground in the polar regions, whereas it must travel to greater heights before condensation occurs in the tropics. Also the heights show a variation according the season and time of day. The cause of this variation is temperature, the clouds reach the highest altitude in mid afternoon when the air is warmest and lowest at night when the air is coldest.
These variation are due to temperature, polar air is generally colder than temperature or tropical air at equal elevations throughout the troposphere. Thus air cools to its dew point relatively close to the ground in the polar regions, whereas it must travel to greater heights before condensation occurs in the tropics. Also the heights show a variation according the season and time of day. The cause of this variation is temperature, the clouds reach the highest altitude in mid afternoon when the air is warmest and lowest at night when the air is coldest.
Classification according to the height.