Clouds, those mystical shape changing structures up above our heads. They even have super powers: they fly, they hide Sun and Moon, they bring rain, they deform and even get vanished. With all these super powers they never fail to induce curiosity into our childish brain.
Though, they are poetically mystical, but scientifically not. Clouds are made up of droplets, frozen crystals and other solid particles. In our atmosphere, clouds can be found in the troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere.
The shape, structure and property of clouds differ with altitude. On the basics of this, clouds are classified into various types. Just like the Latin and common names in the biological world, clouds the same. The naming follows, universally adopted Luke Howard’s nomenclature. This nomenclature basically divides clouds into five physical forms. These physical forms are divided into ten genus types based on altitude. These genus types are divided into species and the species further subdivided into varieties.
With lots of classifications, let’s see some of the major cloud forms:
Cumulonimbus
Abbreviation: Cb
Altitude range: 400 – 13000 meters
Known for: Causing heavy rains, thunderstorms etc.
How it looks: Huge and tall
Cirrocumulus
Abbreviation: Cc
Altitude range: 6000 – 13000 meters
Known for: they are the sign of better weather
How it looks: small and move in patches
Cirrostratus
Abbreviation: Cs
Altitude range: 5500 – 13000 meters
Known for: sign for upcoming rain
How it looks: its soft shade the sun acting as a veil
Cirrus
Abbreviation: Ci
Altitude range: 5000 – 14000 meters
Known for: Causing natural phenomena like Halos
How it looks: thin, stretch clouds
Altocumulus
Abbreviation: Ac
Altitude range: 2000 – 6000 meters
Known for: signals the upcoming thunderstorms
How it looks: similar to cirrocumulus but larger
Altostratus
Abbreviation: As
Altitude range: 2000 – 6000 meters
Known for: increase in precipitation changes it to Nimbostratus
How it looks: In layers or sheets
Nimbostratus
Abbreviation: Ns
Altitude range: Below 3000 meters
Known for: Bringing steady precipitation
How it looks: Dark, those rain bringing cloud
Cumulus
Abbreviation: Cu
Altitude range: Below 2000 meters
Known for: This form of cloud is also located in other planets like Mars and Jupiter
How it looks: like a cotton, puffy like
Stratocumulus
Abbreviation: Sc
Altitude range: below 2000 meters
Known for: shading earth from sun
How it looks: combination of stratus and cumulus
Stratus
Abbreviation: St
Altitude range: Below 2000 meters
Known for: That beautiful drizzles
How it looks: like horizontal layers
More detailed and infographic cloud stories will continue in the second part of this article.
This is a special article in the celebration of World Meteorological Day – 2019. This year’s theme is “The Sun, The Earth and The weather”
Article by M R Raghul
An engineer and a creative science communicator. Found his passion for science outreaches while traveling and interacting with kids.
Tech guy and the Co-founder of Sciteum!
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