A report on Cloud and Water vapor

Tropospheric cloud classification by altitude of occurrence: Multi-level and vertical genus-types not limited to a single altitude level include nimbostratus, cumulonimbus, and some of the larger cumulus species.

Evidence for increasing amounts of stratospheric water vapor over time in Boulder, Colorado.

MODIS/Terra global mean atmospheric water vapor in atm-cm (centimeters of water in an atmospheric column if it condensed)

Windy evening twilight enhanced by the Sun's angle, can visually mimic a tornado resulting from orographic lift

Cryogeyser erupting on Jupiter's moon Europa (artist concept)

Nimbostratus cloud producing precipitation

Artist's illustration of the signatures of water in exoplanet atmospheres detectable by instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Cumulonimbus cloud over the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston, Texas

High cirrus upper-left merging into cirrostratus and some cirrocumulus upper right

Sunrise scene giving a shine to an altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus cloud (see also 'species and varieties')

Altostratus translucidus near top of photo merging into altostratus opacus near bottom

Cumulus humilis clouds over Jakarta, Indonesia

Stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus over Galapagos, Tortuga Bay (see also 'species and varieties')

$Deep multi-level nimbostratus cloud covering the sky with a scattered layer of low stratus fractus pannus (see also 'species' and 'supplementary features' sections)$

Cumulus humilis and cumulus mediocris with stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus in the foreground (see also 'species and varieties')

Towering vertical cumulus congestus embedded within a layer of cumulus mediocris: Higher layer of stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus.

Progressive evolution of a single cell thunderstorm

Isolated cumulonimbus cloud over the Mojave Desert, releasing a heavy shower

Altocumulus lenticularis forming over mountains in Wyoming with lower layer of cumulus mediocris and higher layer of cirrus spissatus

Example of a castellanus cloud formation

Cumulus mediocris cloud, about to turn into a cumulus congestus

A layer of stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus hiding the setting sun with a background layer of stratocumulus cumulogenitus resembling distant mountains.

Cirrus fibratus radiatus over ESO's La Silla Observatory

Altocumulus stratiformis duplicatus at sunrise in the California Mojave Desert, USA (higher layer orange to white; lower layer grey)

Cumulus partly spreading into stratocumulus cumulogenitus over the port of Piraeus in Greece

Cumulonimbus mother cloud dissipating into stratocumulus cumulonimbogenitus at dusk

Cirrus fibratus intortus formed into a Kármán vortex street at evening twilight

Global cloud cover, averaged over the month of October 2009. NASA composite satellite image.

Lenticular nacreous clouds over Antarctica

Joshua Passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant (1800) by Benjamin West, showing Yahweh leading the Israelites through the desert in the form of a pillar of cloud, as described in

Stratocumulus stratiformis and small castellanus made orange by the sun rising

An occurrence of cloud iridescence with altocumulus volutus and cirrocumulus stratiformis

Sunset reflecting shades of pink onto grey stratocumulus stratiformis translucidus (becoming perlucidus in the background)

Stratocumulus stratiformis perlucidus before sunset. Bangalore, India.

Late-summer rainstorm in Denmark. Nearly black color of base indicates main cloud in foreground probably cumulonimbus.

Particles in the atmosphere and the sun's angle enhance colors of stratocumulus cumulogenitus at evening twilight

$Total cloud cover fraction averaged over the years 1981-2010 from the CHELSA-BIOCLIM+ data set$

On Earth, clouds are formed as a result of saturation of the air when it is cooled to its dew point, or when it gains sufficient moisture (usually in the form of water vapor) from an adjacent source to raise the dew point to the ambient temperature.

- Cloud

The condensation of water vapor to the liquid or ice phase is responsible for clouds, rain, snow, and other precipitation, all of which count among the most significant elements of what we experience as weather.

- Water vapor

6 related topics with Alpha

This graph shows the maximum percentage, by mass, of water vapor that air at sea-level pressure across a range of temperatures can contain. For a lower ambient pressure, a curve has to be drawn above the current curve. A higher ambient pressure yields a curve under the current curve.

Dew point

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Graph of the dependence of the dew point upon air temperature for several levels of relative humidity.

The dew point is the temperature to which air must be cooled to become saturated with water vapor, assuming constant air pressure and water content.

In the air, the condensed water is called either fog or a cloud, depending on its altitude when it forms.

View from Blassenstein mountain near Scheibbs (Lower Austria) to the west, with fog over Erlauf valley and Danube

Fog

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Visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface.

A massive fog bank over Twentynine Palms, California, covers the entire city as it begins to rise and join the clouds above it.

Minute droplets of water constitute this after-dark radiation fog, with an ambient temperature of -2 C. Their motion trails are captured as streaks.

A close-up view of water droplets forming fog. Those outside the camera lens's depth of field appear as orbs.

Advection fog layer in San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge and skyline in the background

Light fog reduces visibility on a suburban street, rendering the cyclist very hazy at about 200 m. The limit of visibility is about 400 m, which is before the end of the street.

Sutro Tower casts a 3-dimensional fog shadow

Pogonip fog in Virginia City, Nevada, from an early 20th-century postcard

Tree in field during extreme cold with frozen fog

Ice fog on Pyhäjärvi, Tampere during sunset.

Sea fog or "fret" encroaching on Brighton Pier

Sea fog in the Arctic Ocean near the island of Jan Mayen

Maple tree with red leaves in the morning mist, in western Estonia

A fog on the field of the Leppälahti ja Kuivaniemi villages in Kuopio, Finland

Fog hovering over the valleys surrounding La Silla Observatory.<ref>{{cite web|title=Sunset Panorama at La Silla|url=http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1544a/|work=eso.org|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151128073056/http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1544a/|archive-date=28 November 2015}}</ref>

Fog surrounding skyscrapers in the Melbourne city centre

Light fog over Taipei, Taiwan with Taipei 101 in the background

Fog in London with the Palace of Westminster in the background

Dense fog over Indian subcontinent, captured by NASA's Aqua satellite in December 2012

Fog partially obscuring a mountain in Tirupati in the India summer.

Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influenced by nearby bodies of water, topography, and wind conditions.

Fog appears when water vapor (water in its gaseous form) condenses.

Aerosol pollution over northern India and Bangladesh (Satellite image by NASA)

Cloud condensation nuclei

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Phytoplankton bloom in the North Sea and the Skagerrak – NASA

Cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs), also known as cloud seeds, are small particles typically 0.2 µm, or 1/100 the size of a cloud droplet on which water vapor condenses.

Water cycle

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Biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth.

Time-mean precipitation and evaporation as a function of latitude as simulated by an aqua-planet version of an atmospheric GCM (GFDL's AM2.1) with a homogeneous “slab-ocean” lower boundary (saturated surface with small heat capacity), forced by annual mean insolation.

Global map of annual mean evaporation minus precipitation by latitude-longitude

Relationship between impervious surfaces and surface runoff

In doing so, the water goes through different forms: liquid, solid (ice) and vapor.

A huge concentration of these droplets over a large area in the atmosphere become visible as cloud, while condensation near ground level is referred to as fog.

Convection

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Single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity .

Thermal image of a newly lit Ghillie kettle. The plume of hot air resulting from the convection current is visible.

Idealised depiction of the global circulation on Earth

An oceanic plate is added to by upwelling (left) and consumed at a subduction zone (right).

An illustration of the structure of the Sun and a red giant star, showing their convective zones. These are the granular zones in the outer layers of these stars.

This color schlieren image reveals thermal convection originating from heat conduction from a human hand (in silhouette) to the surrounding still atmosphere.

A fluid under Rayleigh–Bénard convection: the left picture represents the thermal field and the right picture its two-dimensional Fourier transform.

Discrete convective cells in the atmosphere can be identified by clouds, with stronger convection resulting in thunderstorms.

It consists of two primary convection cells, the Hadley cell and the polar vortex, with the Hadley cell experiencing stronger convection due to the release of latent heat energy by condensation of water vapor at higher altitudes during cloud formation.

Cloud physics

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Study of the physical processes that lead to the formation, growth and precipitation of atmospheric clouds.

Clouds consist of microscopic droplets of liquid water (warm clouds), tiny crystals of ice (cold clouds), or both (mixed phase clouds).

This process occurs when one or more of three possible lifting agents—cyclonic/frontal, convective, or orographic—causes air containing invisible water vapor to rise and cool to its dew point, the temperature at which the air becomes saturated.